Grady Ritua, a senior at USC, has 300 songs on his hard drive and downloads often despite the ban. He and his 23 fraternity brothers split the bill for a high-speed DSL connection to dodge the rules. Interviewed on campus at lunchtime, Ritua and his friends ticked off a number of ways around the ban. A program called Napigator reroutes the Napster service. Another student uses the free service NetZero, typing in her requests in the morning and letting the songs flow in while she's in class.
Record companies call it stealing when computer users download copyrighted material for free.
Ritua isn't bothered by that argument. He blames the record labels for jacking up CD prices over the years and says most of the money doesn't go to the artist, anyway. As proof the system is flawed, he cites countless episodes of VH1's Behind the Music in which artists talk of hitting it big, then discovering they're broke. It's not like they're hurting for money. He emphatically believes that copyrights aren't being violated, that trading songs online is no different from making a tape for a friend.