Recording Industry Association of America

> WASHINGTON – As part of the entertainment industry’s efforts to address the ongoing theft of music and movies online by college students, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) today announced a systematic program to identify and curtail campus Local Area Network (“LAN”) piracy at universities across the country. As part of this new program, the RIAA and MPAA today sent letters to 40 university presidents in 25 states alerting them of LAN piracy problems on their campuses and encouraging immediate action to stop and prevent theft by such means.

It was fun in the old days when going to a university meant you’d easily get your hands on just about anything. How the RIAA and MPAA actually expect to be able to stop teens from downloading music and movies I have no idea. There’s always some server outside of the US providing the goodies on a non-standard port, with encrypted data-traffic. Most filtering techniques also hamper legitimate downloads, making it a pita for just about everyone. The only way to make a dent in piracy is to offer quality at a reasonable cost. Paying over $60+ for a video game that you get bored of, or even worse — is unplayable due to bugs, here in Norway is pretty much out of the question. It’s been years since I’ve bought a CD, and similarily years since I’ve been to the movies.

This means I spend my days in Linux/FreeBSD, listening to internet radio while programming using free tools and frameworks.