As you might have guessed after reading a recent e-mail, college students have become the favorite target of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

In February 2007, the organization launched its new campus anti-piracy initiative. According to the RIAA Web site, the organization, on behalf of major record companies, intends to pursue hundreds of enforcement actions against university network users each month.

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.