When it comes to pirating music, a lot of people don’t consider it stealing because it is a crime that occurs so often. But with so many programs that enable pirating, it seems like a crime that may never be stopped.

Pirating music is free, and free options are always attractive to college students.

Most know that pirating music is technically stealing, but many continue to download song after song, CD after CD.

“Pirating music is stealing, but file sharing can be a good networking opportunity,” said Chris Gyurnek, a student at the University.

File sharing is the practice of making files available for others to download over the Internet and smaller networks. It follows the peer-to-peer idea, where the files are stored on and served by personal computers of the users.

“If a band is unsigned or just wants to get noticed, they can share their music and gain a fan base,” Gyurnek said.

“I don’t really think about pirating music as stealing because I do it so much and so many other people do it,” said sophomore Amanda Andersky.

One popular program students use to pirate music is LimeWire.

LimeWire is a fast, relatively easy-to-use program that contains no spyware, adware or other software. It is a client on the Gnutella Network, which means it has open standards and an open network – anyone can use it at any time.

Torrents are another popular way students pirate music.

Whether it is uTorrent, Azureus or BitComet, they mostly all work the same way. They are download management software which are easy to use, fast and entirely free.

Available for Macintosh and PC users, iTunes is a digital media player application introduced by Apple. It is for playing and organizing digital music and video files.

In addition, iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store in order to download purchased digital music, music videos and television shows.

“I use iTunes to listen to my music, but I don’t buy music from it,” Andersky said.

This is true of many; students use iTunes because it is the easiest organizational tool for music, but still do not purchase music from it because there are ways to pirate for free.

Students are faced with deciding whether or not to buy CDs when they can download them for free.

Buying CDs seem to be a thing of the past. Not very often are people actually looking for CDs, unless it is a personal favorite.

“I would buy a CD if I was getting someone a gift,” Gyurnek said. “Or if I really enjoyed a particular album so much that I wanted a hard copy of it.”

Even though pirating music can be easy and free, Jennifer Kahn, an employee at Finders, a local music store, said pirating does have an effect on some business.

Avid music fans purchase CDs, “but there are people who want to support the music industry in general, and the music purists, who want the CD with everything included,” Kahn said.