The number of OU students charged with file sharing and other related cases have decreased in the past year, said Michelle Wiginton, OU communications director for Information Technology.

"We have become more of a service to [students] by increasing awareness of online security," Wiginton said.

Since Feb. 27, 2000, there have been 17 charges filed under Title 16, Section 24 of the Student Code regarding computer misuse, said Amanda Miller, staff attorney for OU Legal Counsel.

Miller said the charges filed involved theft and tampering with computer software, which included but was not limited to file sharing.

Students charged under Title 16 Section 24, may or may not have been found guilty, Miller said.

Miller said she could not release further information on the specific cases because it was bound by Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

Maxwell Wegman, University College freshman, said he knows consequences exist and avoids downloading files through the OU network.

"I do it at home because I hear you get in trouble here. If I do it here, I do it through a wireless network," he said.

Wegman said some people constantly download large files.

"I know people that download 10 or 15 movies a day," Wegman said.

Brittany Washington, University College freshman, said she is a newcomer to downloading music.

Share, share alike

File sharing on campus has decreased in the last year.

o Apple announced Jan. 18 its revenue for 2005 totalled $5.75 billion with 59 percent coming from music sales.

o Apple's iTunes Music Store ranked seventh on the top-10 list of retailers.o 80 percent of file sharers surveyed said they bought at least one album after first sampling it on a file-sharing network.

Source: Harvard Business School and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"I'd say I've downloaded over 100 songs," she said.

Washington, who said she started downloading music at the beginning of the semester, may be among a minority of students arriving late to the popular trend.

Wesley Dabbour, industrial engineering junior, said he began downloading files in seventh grade and has downloaded thousands of music and movie files.

Washington and Wegman said they choose the program LimeWire for downloading music because it's extremely fast.

BitTorrent -- peer-to-peer file sharing -- a system through which users directly connect with one another to transmit and obtain pieces of files, is catching on fast with students.

Courtney Templeton, University College freshman, said she uses Tomato, a BitTorrent program, when downloading music files.

"It just seemed like the easiest one," she said.

Templeton said although she downloads free files, she prefers to buy them.

"Sometimes I download free music, but a lot of the time I actually pay for the music I download on iTunes," Templeton said.

While many people continue to use peer-to-peer file sharing, Web sites such as iTunes maintain above average sales.

Apple's iTunes Music Store ranked seven in the top 10 list of U.S. retailers "based on equivalent number of units sold" in 2005, according to an NPD Group press release.

Apple announced Jan. 18 its revenue for 2005 totaled $5.75 billion with 59 percent coming from music sales.

Since the emergence of numerous online file sharing programs such as LimeWire and Kazaa, the music industry has claimed these programs engage in online music piracy and lead to a significant drop in music sales.

But according to a March 2004 report conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales."

The 2004 study found more than 60 billion people have downloaded free music and movie files, with the majority of those who download being youth.
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