Here at ProfessorPerformance, we love music.

We can't agree on it to save our lives (try Duran Duran vs. Radiohead), but we all listen to it, love it and download it.

And there is where the controversy begins - for us and many other college students out there...

In March of this year the RIAA (Recording Industry of America) announced it was suing 531 new users for downloading of copyrighted music. 89 of the users were from 21 different universities. In total, the RIAA had sued 1,977 people for an average of $3000 each.

It's not surprising that college students have giant bullseyes painted on their noggins...with access to lightning-fast university ethernet connections, downloading is easier than sleeping in during an 8 a.m. Psychology class. Plus - having a good amount of free time and the realtive freedom to do whatever the hell you want don't exactly hurt either.

While the RIAA's lawsuits nab what I's like to call "a few squirts in the bucket" as far as illegal downloaders go, the highly-publicized cases have scared away quite a few peer-to-peer downloaders. End result? More and more people are using pay services, like iTunes. In fact, a survey done by Pew Internet & American Life Inc. showed a 35% decrease in downloads in one year alone. The fear of RIAA lawsuits being the driving factor behind the change.

As a side note, I don't think the RIAA's crusade, done in the name of preserving the music industry's profits, is sound in logic. Downloads, even those deemed illegal, do encourage people to listen to more music (and possibly buy it). In fact, BMG's profits are up big this year, despite illegal downloads. Perhaps the music industry should concentrate more on lowering the prices of $15 CDs to encourage sales. Oh wait, they were forced to in a colossal settlement for price-fixing. My bad.

I, admittedly am one of those folks who used to download music like mad for free.....only to ultimately go the pay-per-song route. Yet two things happened to me recently that has caused me rethink all of this.

First, I bought a new computer.

It was the first time I ever had to transfer a huge amount of information from one PC to another. And with a broken CD writer (don't ask), I knew I had my work cut out for me. Yet somehow I managed to trasfer all the files, settings, bookmarks, even programs to my new PC. This included my 500 song collection of MP3s.

Then the crap-o-ramma begins. I am suddenly unable to play half my songs because the license for these downloads failed to transfer to my new PC. Having acquired my songs from iTunes, Napster and MusicNow, I now had to revist each and try to get the licenses up-to-date. I learn from each that I'll be able to download my tunes to a new computer anywhere from 3-5 times and then I'll need to buy every song again. I wonder briefly why...when I buy a CD at a record store there's no clerk to tell me: "Now Kasey, you'll only be able to play this on 3 CD players, then you'll have to come back and buy it from me again..."

Second, I got nailed my Microsoft bullshit.

If re-acquiring licenses wasn't bad enough, this week I've been challenged by a new plague to my music library. Every single track in my music folder that's in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format will not work, instead preferring to try to update its license and then crashing with an error. Roughly 3/4 of my music is in this cursed format, mainly because it takes up less space than an MP3 and allows me to store more music on my portable music player.

So far I haven't been able to find any fixes for this. Microsoft help, of course, is helpless. So I'm left wondering this...why is it that every song I bought and paid for legally is now the music I'm unable to listen to at all?

THE BOTTOM LINE

Pay-per-download services have a future in my opinion, but to attract college students to their services in large numbers, some things will need to change. If they don't, the RIAA can continue trying (in vain) to shut down every college student from illegally downloading music.

Here's my list of what has to change, at least for this music-lover:

1. Allow unlimited transfers of licenses between computers (while this could be abused, how bloody likely is it?)

2. Fix the technologies (no one is likely to put up with error messages on certain formats for long - especially if the illegal stuff works better...)

3. Lower the price (College students can barely afford a fast food dinner, let alone $15 for a CD-length collection of songs. A selling price of less than 50 cents a download could see demand quadruple in my opinion)

Until the day this happens, I suppose all you can do is put up with the glitches and the high costs of pay services. Or download illegally.

If you choose the latter, good luck. Remember to clean out your Downloads folder often, avoid classifying yourself as a "Ultrapeer" and avoid offering up hundreds to thousands of songs for others to upload. Most RIAA suits are against such "mega" users.

And if anyone knows how to make my WMA's work again, let me know. I have an aching to hear Duran Duran's "Hungry Liek a Wolf..."