Recently the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill stating that all universities must provide evidence showing their actions penalizing illegal media downloaders. Universities must also show that they are implementing technology to detect the illegal files, while also providing their students with alternatives to illegal downloading. Failure to do so will cause students to lose all financial aid provided by their university.

The act of downloading and using illegal music providers may not feel like breaking the law. It serves as an easy and costless action to hear certain band’s latest hit.

Nearly $100 billion is given to students in financial grants a year. This form of financial assistance may be some students’ only chance to participate in higher education. There are large numbers of families who can not afford to send one more child to college in today’s society.

Even though illegal downloading seems to be a persistent problem in today’s society, the issue is being exacerbated by terminating financial aid to students that may not even participate in illegal downloading, or even own a computer.

It is apparent that the problem is recognized as severe, and they are willing to take extreme measures, but it seems that the problem will be stopped quickly.

The factor to the new law that makes the problem disappear more realistically would be the detail that the universities are willing to provide students with alternative music downloading options.

This segment of the new ruling shows that even though consequences to the problem will be initiated if universities fail to cease the problem, the commiseration from the school boards and government is there.

Most students who partake in illegal downloading do not think that they will be caught, and they do not realize the severity of the crime. The act of peer-to-peer downloading is stealing.

It may not seem so, but each song is a product of the artist, created to be sold, whether it is through a CD purchase or a file from iTunes.

Even though there is nothing better than receiving a product for free when you could have paid for it, there are alternatives to illegal downloading that will not end with a criminal sentence or termination of financial aid offer.

The same programs that provide free music files also have files to purchase for a reasonably low price. ITunes also provides the same service of offering files for sensibly a low cost.

The issue of illegal downloading will take intense actions to see the problem ceased, yet the more the attention it recieves, the faster it will end.

Even though not many college students want to spend money on something that could be free, the crime of illegal downloading is becoming much more pervasive, and the government and school boards are taking severe actions to terminate the problem.

In the end, $13 for a CD may not seem too expensive when you lose $30,000 in financial grants as a consequence to music piracy.