The pattern for what comes next in the case of students sharing music files without paying for them could be as predictable as the latest rap hit offending parents. Just as the Napster flurry in 2000 set the “greedy” recording industry – which, after all, only created the music – against the forces of freedom in the distribution industry – which, after all, stand to make a nice pile of cash selling hardware – this round is about technology getting ahead of honest behavior.

University of Maine students in Orono and elsewhere in the system have been warned by the Recording Industry Association of America that, along with countless students on campuses nationwide, they are violating copyright laws by downloading songs and then sharing them with friends. RIAA is said to be offering a settlement price of a few thousand dollars to keep the matter out of court. Suing your customers usually isn’t a way to win market share, but in this case it gets everyone’s attention.

The principle behind RIAA’s ire is simple: Musicians and their recording companies wrote, performed and copyrighted the music, owning it in the same way they would own any other piece of intellectual property, much as Microsoft owns its software. If you use it without paying for it, you’re stealing.

Students know this. Their calculated risk is that they either will not be caught or, if caught, the penalty will be minor. RIAA has forced the issue by raising the stakes. With technology making sharing bits of data all the easier, creators of intellectual property have little choice but to protest loudly.

Napster, then the most popular means for taking music, protested that it was standing up for the rights of computer users everywhere when it swore never to give in to the demands of the music industry – and it kept protesting until it signed lucrative deals with the music industry. The current protest can either go through months of proclamations of allegiance to customers or art or something, enriching only the public-relations firms that help organize these things, or the music and tech industries can find a settlement that allows for simple and convenient ways to pay for downloaded music.

The money saved by both industries on the PR firms could help offset the settlement offers for the students.