Recent lawsuits and settlements between the Record Industry Association of America and individual college students have marked the beginning of a new battle revolving around Internet file sharing. The RIAA sued four individual college students who hosted sites that enabled users to download copyrighted material. Each student was fined $150,000 per file, adding up to an enormous expense that the students could not possibly afford to pay. The settlement reached required each student o pay a fine of only about $12,000 to $17,000. While the fines may be reduced, the overaggressive litigious actions of the RIAA have only just begun.

Only a few years ago, the RIAA thought it had won the battle against Internet piracy when it won its case against Napster, shutting down the popular and user-friendly music sharing site. Much to their chagrin, the technology has changed, making the decisions of the Napster case null and void for the current types of file-sharing found online. Napster's Achilles' heel was its centralized server; new programs and Web sites now are decentralized to avoid the fate of Napster.

Because they extracted settlements from the college students against whom the RIAA has taken legal action, these first four lawsuits may be just the beginning. The success may bring about continued litigation in an attempt to instill fear and deter people from sharing files and skating on thin ice regarding copyright laws. By attacking college students, however, the record companies could ruin students' futures. Even the reduced settlements may be enough to hinder one of the students' educations and further lawsuits will probably attempt to go after more college students. College students may be the source of much of the methods of file-sharing and for its popularity, but bankrupting them to earn more money for one of the largest industries in the country is overhanded.

File-sharing and Internet piracy are not going to disappear no matter how aggressive the record industry becomes. One lawsuit or many lawsuits will simply make the methods of sharing evolve, not eliminate the practice of file-sharing. The RIAA should be looking at ways of working with the technology to promote their product, not to deter people from using a technology that is already in place and readily accessible. The inability of the RIAA to evolve to meet the popularity of file-sharing is one of the main motivations driving their lawsuits. If they could find a way to benefit from file-sharing, it is likely this legal activity would come to an abrupt conclusion.

The difficulty of shutting down file-sharing programs like Kazaa all at once has led to the decision to isolate individuals who are easier to sue. With their success in court thus far, it is inevitable that the RIAA will continue its fight and attempt to dismantle the large file-sharing networks. Without a centralized server and without the names of the individual users, the RIAA still has no ability to immediately end all Internet file-sharing; however, their recent actions seem to show that the RIAA would have no qualms about suing every individual user on Kazaa or other Internet file-sharing programs in order to achieve its goal. Protecting copyrights is understandable, but the antagonistic approach that the record industry is pursuing is not only predatory, but will ultimately be ineffective.