mean to refer to]). Unless you go with some government-mandated licensing scheme (something I oppose in favor of voluntary licensing schemes), lawsuits are going to have to play an element in maintaining the system. Without lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits, enforcement would crumble. Moreover, deterrence is going to require that the penalties be serious and will likely greatly outweigh the actual losses. In other words, If you're infringing 100 albums, in order to deter, the civil penalty is going to have to be greater than $1,000 - $2,000, which is what the albums would have cost had you simply bought them. Nevertheless, the students, despite their narcissism, have a point. The current statutory penalties are far in excess of what deterrence would council. When the minimum statutory damages for typical filesharing cases are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, that doesn't really seem particularly reasonable to me. I believe that deterrence can be served by a lesser amount. Furthermore, while I oppose copyright infringement via filesharing services and council against it, the students do have a point about the music industry doing more to fight it with incentives for legitimate purchases than merely punishing filesharing. Originally, the movie studios priced videotapes at $70-$100+. They didn't believe there was a market for consumers to buy videotapes. Had they continued that pricing policy, they would have encouraged the creation of a thriving black market in infringing videotapes. Such a market may be regretted, but would have been the expected outcome.