Music sales have dropped 10 percent from the year before, according to recent numbers released.

College downloaders have cut back their Internet “purchases” by even more, because of a statistical error of almost 30 percent.

College students are the best at downloading music. We know where to look for it and we know what we’re looking for. We have all the best equipment and all the fastest and best networks.

So it’s kind of logical that we would be downloading more than our fair share of music.

But now that the figure is closer to 15 percent of total downloads, a decrease from the previous, exaggerated 44 percent.

The problem was that the study assumed people would pay for everything they took for free. Oops.

Either way, college students are disproportionately costing the music industry money and CMU needs to have at least a policy to deal with it.

Recording industry advocates have been relying on those statistics, often used to substantiate claims of college students being almost half of the illegal downloading problem.

Bandwidth limitations are a sensible way to deal with the problem and are used at CMU.

Students are getting sued by the Recording Industry Association of America.

CMU students already are getting it and, according to an Information Technology manager, they are more than a few.

Even though CMU does not police the network, ultimately they will find students who will be punished by the recording industry.

The costs of these lawsuits can be staggering, and could realistically cost more than one semester’s tuition.

CMU lets students know that it is illegal.

Anyone downloading illegally should stop because, as Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick recently demonstrated, technology leaves a record.

It’s easy and, so far, legal to press charges against illegal downloaders.

So don’t risk it on CMU’s campus because it may raise your tuition.

If you want to get music, please be real clever about it because if you get caught, CMU is going to give you up.

That’s when the RIAA makes sure you get it.

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