YSU Students speak out on music piracy

Local students said they'd be willing to pay for the right to download music.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- When Jen Ragusa, a freshman at Youngstown State University, moved in to the University Courtyard apartments, she wasn't just disappointed.
"I was pretty upset about it," she said. "I was mad."
Her complaint? The high-speed Internet service that comes with her rent prevents her from downloading music from popular Web sites.
She said it's like that in all the apartments and in campus dorms.
Many do it
Ragusa, like many of the students hanging out Thursday morning at Peaberry's Cafe in YSU's Kilcawley Center, said everybody downloads songs, especially since CD burners became a standard accessory on personal computers.
"I think the price of CDs is outrageous, considering you can buy a burnable CD for 98 cents or buy a music CD for 12 or 18 bucks," said freshman Derreck Almasi of Austintown.
Kevbo Carr of Austintown likes hard rock and country music. The freshman said he still buys CDs, but sometimes friends burn him CDs with a mix of downloaded songs from various artists.
How can the downloading be hurting artists when they charge $25 for a concert T-shirt? he asked.
"They're being paid tons of money for their endorsements and concert tickets ... and people are still buying their CDs," said sophomore Rachel Detec of Liberty.
"If I was making millions of dollars going around to auditoriums rocking it out, I'm not going to worry about somebody downloading my songs," added sophomore Dan Metzinger of Youngstown.
Fighting back
But the bands rocking it out are worrying. And they're on the attack.
The recording industry has taken its piracy fight directly to music fans, suing 261 people Monday and promising to sue hundreds more in coming weeks as it strives to stamp out music piracy it blames for a three-year slump in CD sales.
The Recording Industry Association of America settled the first of the suits Tuesday for $2,000 -- with the mother of a 12-year-old defendant, Brianna LaHara of New York. Brianna was accused of downloading more than 1,000 songs using the Kazaa Web site.
But at YSU, most students interviewed thought downloading for personal use was OK.
"I think it's wrong for people to burn and sell CDs to other people for money," said senior Amjid Nawaz of Boardman. "It's all right if you download and keep it for yourself."
Freshman Zainub Khalid of Canfield said she knows someone who does profit from selling burned CDs and she, too, thinks it's unfair.
Most students think it's OK to download favorite songs, especially as an alternative to paying $18 for a CD that they say has only one good song. Others say it makes sense to use the Internet to preview songs before you buy.
View on monthly fee
Some said they were willing to pay a monthly fee -- some a couple of bucks, others no more than $10 -- for the legal right to download songs.
But, "if it gets out there, it's free," said third-year student Mike Owens of Austintown. "If we have access to it and we can use it, we shouldn't get in trouble for it."
Second-year student Lisa Simkins of Austintown said she's stopped downloading after hearing that the recording industry was cracking down. But, she said, young people downloading songs shouldn't be the target.
"I think the one who put the songs there should be the ones to take responsibility," she said.
Nationwide, there are signs that others have stopped file-sharing since June, when the RIAA announced its lawsuit campaign, or moved to other file-swapping networks perceived to be safer than market leader Kazaa.
Traffic on the FastTrack network, the conduit for Kazaa and the Grokster download site, declined over the summer and climbed again last month, as has the number of people using less-popular, file-sharing software.
At the same time, a decline in CD sales worsened. Between June 15 and Aug. 3, the decline in CD sales accelerated 54 percent. And as of Aug. 3, CD sales were down 9.4 percent over the same period in 2002, according to the Yankee Group.
XThe Associated Press contributed to this report.