Attention music-stealing college students: Find another way to get your fix.

Why? Because the recording industry has plenty of lawyers, and they intend to use them.

It was only a few weeks ago that I wrote about the Recording Industry Association of America dropping the hammer on the University of Maine System. Students are allegedly maliciously stealing music with no regard to artists, producers, roadies, groupies, agents, ex-wives and everyone else who gets a cut from album sales.

Looks like they’ve dropped a new round of letters on colleges and universities across the country, and the student newspaper is more than happy to name names, (from The Maine Campus ):

"The Recording Industry Association of America sent a new volley of pre-litigation letters to universities yesterday. No students in the University of Maine System were implicated, but students at Bates College, Bowdoin College and the University of New Hampshire were among 413 students nationwide accused of illegally sharing copyrighted music."

But it gets better! Bowdoin's Chief Information Officer Mitch Davis says Bowdoin students aren’t as bad as others (from The Bowdoin Orient ):

"But Davis also stressed the relatively low level of illegal activity on campus.
'Compared with other schools, Bowdoin has very low levels of illegal downloading,' Davis said. '[Illegal downloading] is not a considerable problem, though it is still something we must deal with.'"

Uh oh UMaine...are they talking about you?

Both articles, as well as my column, have a quote from someone saying something along these lines: Illegally downloading music is the same as walking into Bull Moose and taking a CD.

Well, is it?

Here’s a good example: The guys over at wepushbuttons.com are offering their first compilation album, featuring lostsatellite, Nomar Slevik, the Desert Peoples, as well as J.Hjort, Mike Clouds and Moshe, who created the site along with Todd "The Rocket" Richards.

And here’s the best part – it’s free. All you have to do is download it, and you get 19 tracks from local and international artists.

So if they offer it for free, it’s not stealing, right? So the question then is, why do some musicians give it up for free when others don’t?

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