Illicit activities enjoy renown on college campuses. Most of these deserve no more than a wink and a nod, but illegal file sharing has received lots of attention recently after LimeWire was served the legal kiss of death: a court-ordered injunction. Students routinely defend ‘illegal’ file-sharing and claim that it shouldn’t be prosecuted; I disagree with the standard arguments.

Grief number one protests that it’s the record companies that grab the cash, not the artists, and who likes big, greedy record companies? True, artists don’t stand to make heaps of money when royalty percentages are around 10-20 percentages and they often face production costs. True, musicians earn their dough by commercial licensing deals and tours.

That the musician does not get all of the money, however, does not absolve the copyright violation. Intellectual property is property and file sharing violates holders’ rights. Wherever the money goes, the violation still exists, and it’s not as if record companies are mafia gangs.

Another popular argument is that file sharing spreads the cultural love, so to speak, and opens culture’s doors to the poor of pocket but rich of heart. College students, forever worriedly eyeing their bank accounts, can’t pay to stay culturally hip. But this strikes me as dishonest.

It’s unclear why we’re entitled to private ownership of all culture. Pirating might signal a demand for music that is greater than the means consumers have to pay for $1 track prices, but nobody is entitled to complete private ownership of the world’s music. Music ownership is a privilege.

That being said, there are awesome cultural institutions called libraries. They serve the purpose of spreading culture at a minimal cost to the citizen. If you don’t like your library’s selection, then you can make your interests clear. If students complain that they want to access it all without leaving their computer, then they are appealing to their own laziness.

Artists work very hard to make original, engaging pieces of art, and deserve to be paid for their creative work, not just for tours. Record companies have to charge money to defray the advertising and other costs. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, only 10 percent of albums are profitable, so clearly record companies are already challenged to turn profits. Cultural sharing is great, but private ownership of culture entails paying for the culture.

Music can still be enjoyed without being owned, as the likes of Pandora and YouTube make music accessible for free. For those who wish to “try out” bands via torrenting, there are 30-second samples.

At this point, a file sharer might appeal to the fact that, according to TorrentFreak, file sharers on average buy more music. All that probably shows though, is that file sharers love music more than the average consumer, and hence spring for the occasional purchase.

Another common avenue of argumentation holds that illegal file sharing will continue despite the legal interventions. Shut down LimeWire, and it’s off to BearShare we go. This quickly morphs into a diatribe against the record companies’ Neolithic business model.

Sure, record companies’ losses (30 percent decrease in revenues since 2004 according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) are not due solely to file sharing. A newly competitive marketplace of video games and mobile devices gives consumers more options, and digital music’s ascendancy means single track sales and the end of physical degradation of track copies. But file sharing accounts for some of the revenue losses, and to claim that record companies must adapt to changing consumer behavior (i.e. pirating) by offering cheaper music is disingenuous.

To ask record labels to drop prices because you prefer to illegally download music, rather than pay full price, sounds a tad demanding. I’m also hard-pressed to believe that dropping prices will drive torrenters to buy tracks instead of going the free route.

Even if the legal battles may be ultimately futile for the record companies, their legal claim against the illegality of file sharing is fair. Violation of copyright laws is wrong, the future profitability of record labels’ aside.

My point, then, is this: Don’t pretend like file sharing is justified. The rationales ring hollow, especially when they end up saying something to the effect of, “you can’t catch me and have to adapt your business model.”

If you want to torrent because it’s difficult to prosecute individuals, take a roll of the dice. I’m not here to be morally righteous, but to plead with people to be honest about what they’re doing when they torrent.

Charles is a senior in LAS.