It’s quick, free and seems foolproof. Why would anyone pay the outrageous price of $1.29 per song on iTunes when you could get that song for free?

File sharing and illegal downloading is a part of the college culture. According to a 2006 study by the Christian Science Monitor, college students reported that two-thirds of their music was downloaded illegally.

Students who illegally obtain music and movies may need to find alternative ways to get this desired media. Within the past month, file sharing giants such as Megaupload, BTJunkie, FileSonic and Uploaded.to have been shut down by the federal government.

A sophomore in the College of Communication, who wished to remain anonymous, illegally downloaded a movie two years ago that was produced by Universal Pictures. Universal sent the student a cease and desist order for file sharing through an email, which threatened legal action unless the downloading stopped. The student also received a $350 fine.

The student no longer illegally downloads but knows that many Marquette students take extensive measures to obtain music and movies for free. The student said other Marquette students will take security measures to get away with file sharing by shutting off Marquette’s wireless routers in their rooms, changing the router’s address, clearing internet histories and not using cookies on browsers.

“When you know what you’re doing, it’s really hard to feel the legal backlash,” the student said.

Marquette has gained a reputation of being a college campus that illegally downloads more music than the average college campus. The Recording Industry Association of America listed Marquette with 21 other universities that had “substantial” amount of tracks that were shared in March 2004.

James Pokrywczynski, associate professor of advertising at Marquette, became interested in illegal file sharing on college campuses several years ago. Pokrywczynski and his colleagues from Syracuse University specifically surveyed Marquette and Syracuse students on their file sharing habits, searching for ways in which they might target students to stop illegal file sharing, especially on campuses where the practice is so prevalent.

“We were looking if we could say anything in advertising that could change their minds,” Pokrywcynski said.

In 2005, Marquette was the first university to launch a campaign to stop piracy. The campaign, called Define the Line, encouraged students to stop peer-to-peer file sharing and ran the campaign with advertisements based on fears of getting a virus from an illegal download.

However, students from other universities do not believe that campaigns will stop piracy. Robby Roth, a former student at Purdue University, has never bought an electronic CD in his life and chooses to burn audio files off of YouTube to get music. He finds fast and efficient sites that are known for not carrying viruses, such as Vuze. He believes that online piracy is a never-ending cycle.

“The internet is constantly evolving. When one file sharing website shuts down, several more open in its place,” Roth said.

Roth used to share movie files at Purdue. The university has a database called Dtella, which was created for students to send electronic group projects to one another. Roth estimates that 20 to 40 percent of students used Dtella to share movies.

Students at Purdue are allotted a certain amount of gigabyte space to download off of Dtella every day. As long as the student does not go over the daily allotted space, IT services cannot see what a student is downloading. Unless IT services specifically follows file trafficking, Purdue students are free to download without getting caught.

Roth feels a little guilty about these actions but not enough to stop downloading. He believes that this mentality has spread among most college students.