Illegal downloading of music has repercussions that many students are not aware of. Morrisville State College has taken the necessary precautions to make sure students are aware of the consequences if they get caught illegally downloading music.

"Under the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, students face the potential risk of losing their federal student aid if universities do not offer alternatives to illegal downloading. The bill, HR 4137, has been introduced to the House of Representatives and is up for debate in the coming weeks," Gina Belmonte of thesantaclara.com said. The second part of the act is that universities have to come up with alternatives to illegal downloading.

If colleges lose financial aid, it brings a huge problem to our attention. How are students who depend on financial aid going to afford to go to college?

 MSC is number 13 in the top 25 of highest illegal downloading colleges in the country. 52 students have been charged with illegally downloading music on campus. The smallest amount of money that a student could be charged is $3000.

That number could go up at any time. Students who don't respond to the subpoena in 20 days will be charged an extra $1000. Students who need six months to pay the bill will be charged an extra $500 on top of the first charge.

There are many consequences to illegally downloading music that students don't clearly understand or don't care about.

Many students mistakenly think that because they don't share the music or download a lot of music at one time that they won't get caught. "I think people would care more about it if you heard about people getting caught, we don't hear about it, so we don't think it's a big deal," said MSC third year Equine Science and Management student Erika Attoma.

MSC has come up with a way to stop the illegal downloads on campus. It’s called the Audible Magic box. It cost $39,000, and SUNY paid for it. 

It stops students from illegally downloading and sharing music from peer- to- peer on campus.  In the short time that MSC has had the "box" it has already stopped thousands of songs being illegally downloaded.

Students who use LimeWire PRO think because they pay for it that it is legal, and that they are doing nothing wrong, but the only thing that LimeWire PRO provides  is technological support. "Students think they are fine because they are paying for it," said Jean Boland, Vice President for Information Technology Services. LimeWire PRO is offered at $21.95.

"LimeWire is legal software, but it is illegal for you to use LimeWire to share copyrighted files without permission. Purchasing LimeWire PRO does not constitute a license for obtaining or distributing unauthorized files. When you download LimeWire software from www.limewire.com, you agree to refrain from using LimeWire for the purpose of copyright infringement." (www.limewire.com)

Morrisville offers Ruckus to students on campus. What students don't know is that Ruckus lets students download music to their portable device that is compatable to Ruckus for $20 a semester. "It isn't well known," said Boland. Chris Lawson, director of corporate development, says, "We have almost everything that users are looking for." Some students are dissatisfied with Ruckus because it doesn't have the music they want.

 "The two examples you chose are well publicized examples of bands who have never made their music available for digital subscription download, this is well beyond our control, but happens only rarely," said Lawson.

For Ruckus to be able to download the music to the iPod, "it is also well publicized that Apple does not and will not license their technology to anyone: Ruckus would love for the iPod to be compatible, but Apple simply does not allow it.

“We do offer a portable service called Ruckus-to-Go that works on most other players and cell phones," said Lawson

"I hope to save the students from this early financial burden," says Boland. Students who get charged with illegally downloading usually don't have that kind of money and some have a hard time staying in college. "We are out of ways to help; the Audible Magic Box is the only way to help our students."