In 2003, the RIAA brought a lawsuit against Sarah Seabury Ward, a 66-year-old sculptor from Newbury Massachusetts. Ward and her husband were accused of illegally sharing over 2,000 songs through the file sharing service Kazaa, including Trick Daddy’s “I’m a Thug,” on their Macintosh computer.

Macintosh computers cannot even run Kazaa.

This is just one of many cases of mistaken identity that has stemmed from the RIAA lawsuits brought against alleged music pirates. The multiple internet protocol (IP) addresses found on a given internet service provider (ISP) seem to be the source of this problem.

To avoid getting caught up in the red tape of ISPs, the RIAA is cracking down on college campuses. College students have a tougher time proving their negligence to illegal file sharing on their computers.

College servers also make it easier to pinpoint a given IP address because the college itself acts as the ISP according to Brian Dickerson of Dickerson Law Group in Columbus, Ohio.

In addition, Dickerson said, colleges house the most prolific file sharers.

“This is definitely true by going after colleges, where they (the RIAA) believe serious pirates are,” said Jay Flemma of the Law Offices of Jay Flemma in New York City. According to Flemma, serious pirates are those who have download over 10,000 songs.

Still, mistakes can be made.

“The last two people that walked into my office had 125 and 168 downloaded songs,” Flemma said. “That is certainly not a serious music pirate. That is walking into a bar and ordering a Shirley Temple.”

But college students have something else to offer that makes them an easy target: money.

“College students are going to want to clear this off the record,” Dickerson said. That is why he believes they are more apt to meet the RIAA’s settlement requests that keep the suits out of court.

“They're going after people that can pay an exorbitant amount,” said Flemma. “They are getting themselves a financial win fall and sending a message of fear.”

And most colleges sit back and accept it.

“I think it's bogus to have these colleges backing the RIAA with out conducting their own analysis,” Dickerson said. “Just because the RIAA sends a letter doesn't mean they're right.”

Just ask Sarah Seabury Ward.