The Recording Industry Association of America is at it again. But does it really matter?… The Recording Industry Association of America is at it again. But does it really matter?

Five hundred and thirty-two more people were sued this week for illegally sharing digital music via the Internet. Included were scores of people using computer networks at 21 universities.

The bad guy in all of this is the RIAA, which, over the past few years, has been trying to scare people, especially college students, to make them stop downloading music online. Newsflash — it hasn’t stopped students from downloading; it has only limited how much they download.

Now, including the recent 532, the RIAA has filed lawsuits against 1,977 people, 400 of which have been settled out of court. That’s a lot of people to sue, and for what? Checking out a new song by a band your friend told you about?

You aren’t sure the entire album is worth paying for but just want that one song, and of course, the record stores in the area don’t carry singles. So now the price of wanting to experience something before you hand over $20 for a new piece of plastic is going to run a cool $3,000, which you could have used to buy a hell of a lot of worthless music that the RIAA doesn’t want you to download.

So the RIAA has sued almost 2,000 people, and the downloading still continues, especially on college campuses. Should we all hide under our desks and fear the RIAA is coming after us? Delete our hard drive of any possibly copyrighted music and just go buy the crappy albums that those songs are on?

Well, you should still be buying albums, albeit not the crappy ones, but sometimes they just sneak up on you when you aren’t looking. But I think what the RIAA is trying to hinder is people downloading entire albums onto their computer and then not buying the actual hard copy. I will admit that I download music on my computer, and I know just about everyone on campus does the same. But I still buy albums … a lot. I think there’s something about opening the shrink wrap and leafing through the liner notes that just makes the listening experience much more enjoyable.

But should the RIAA hammer down on everyone even if they only download a single here and there? Honestly, I’m not going to go buy Twista’s Kamikaze just for the single “Slow Jamz.” It’s a good song, but I don’t like rap music enough to invest $18.98 on an album that I will only listen to once, then only play the one song I like.

So no, RIAA, you should not hammer down on everyone. Stay away from the kids who have a single here and there on their hard drive. Stay away from all of us who choose to download. Yes, it’s a shame that some people choose to download an entire album, but is it worth suing a college student who is already in debt? Is it worth suing a high school kid who doesn’t have $100, let alone $3,000.

Of course, my plea and every other plea will go unheard by the RIAA, even though the recording industry and artists aren’t losing that much money from downloading. And they won’t stop releasing albums. But if they did, that then they wouldn’t make any money whatsoever.

And if another band goes on MTV and complains about downloading, turn off your television and stop listening to their music, because they don’t get much from album sales anyway. They have to release an album so that people will listen to their music. People have to listen to their music so they can sell concert tickets, and that’s where they make the majority of their money: ticket sales and merchandise sold at the shows. It costs money to make money and sometimes it’s a bitch. But those are the ropes, and frankly, no one will ever listen to a new artist if they can’t get a free sample here and there.

Basically, the RIAA is not going to stop their rampage on file sharing. And now that they are invading college networks to look into students’ computers, it’s getting worse than before. So show the RIAA what everyone already knows. Show them that album sales are fine if the album is good enough to buy; buy that album you can’t live without.

But if there’s just one song on the album that you like, use your decision-making skills and determine whether it’s worth the chunk of change that you could use for something else. Or perhaps, buy it and give the other songs a chance. Who knows? You might like the whole album. Just don’t download the whole album.