Article Summary: 'US music companies target colleges in crackdown on illegal downloads' By Ewen MacAskill and Conor Clarke

The key points of this article (published on Thursday 22nd February 2007) are:

• The US recording industry has started a new crackdown on illegal music downloading on university campuses throughout America.
• The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents 90% of music companies, has drawn up a list of the universities with the worst student offenders and bombarded the university authorities with 15,000+ complaints.
• The RIAA can identify individual computers on campuses from which the music is being downloaded for free, but not the students.
• Universities are expected to take action ranging from revoking the rights of students to use campus computers to forcing them to watch eight-minute education videos about piracy.
• Music sales had amounted to $14.5bn (£7bn) in 1999 but were down to $12.2bn in 2005, not entirely down to piracy, but piracy is a primary reason for the decline.
• Some critics claim the RIAA acts as a cartel that pays only a tiny percentage of profits to the artists. They also argue that downloading increases the artists' exposure and, as a result, increases legitimate sales.
• Others argue that downloads should be free and that artists and companies could make money through advertising on the sites.