University students may be changing their downloading habits but not their mindsets, according to the California Aggie, news site of the University of California, Davis. One freshman stopped downloading at school for fear of repercussions but said she continues file-sharing at home; another student “said he downloads without regard for copyrights to ‘stick it to the man’.” Still, the number of “illegal downloading” cases in the 2002-’03 school year was 240, last year 94, possibly out of fear of recording industry (RIAA) lawsuits, possibly because of UC Davis’s policy: “For a first offense, a student’s Internet port [access] is shut off for up to a month. For a second offense, the port is shut down for the remainder of the year.” University officials hope they’ll never have to deal with a 3-time offender – they’re “stuck between trying to protect student privacy and stopping illegal activities involving campus Internet services.” Meanwhile, the Pew Internet & American Life project found that 14% of the 128 million American adults now online say they downloaded music at one time but no longer do so. About a third of these say the RIAA’s tactics are the reason they stopped downloading music. Pew also surveyed musicians on file-sharing and found no clear consensus among them.
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