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Almost everyone has at some point pirated music in their lifetime, some people do it every day ignoring that they are actually breaking the law. Kids do it all the time, I know of a few that have extensive music libraries from programs like LimeWire, they believe that because they get access via this software, the stuff they have there is free to take.

In the news we have the case of Jamie Thomas defending herself in courts against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), which is charging her with 24 counts of pirating music over the Internet. When you study Jamie’s case you get into some nasty details of how this mess got to be, allegedly Ms. Thomas had available for download, via a peer-to-peer site, 24 songs that she owned.

Her login name on this peer-to-peer site was the same as her login name used in other social networking sites, and email providers, and this is how the RIAA was able to determine that she was the person committing the crime. I know that by now you should have a bunch of questions, I’ll do my best to explain everything.

The RIAA represents several companies in the music industry business, their main purpose is to protect such companies from the harm of illegal activities, mainly pirating. The common consensus among the blogosphere is that the RIAA is trying to set an example with the Jamie Thomas case by punishing her as bad as they can.

You can read all about this case around the web but the important thing here is to learn from others and prevent this from happening to you. Your children might be getting you in more trouble than what you may think, the first step you should take is to go through your children computer and search for peer-to-peer or file-sharing software. This kind of software can be use for legal distribution of media content but is more than often used for downloading pirated material.

There is a large variety of peer-to-peer or file-sharing software available for download, here are some examples of them, Gnutella, Kazaa, BitTorrent, LimeWire and eDonkey2000. Also you can scan through their music library, if you think that the amount of songs is far more than what you can pay for, they you may be in trouble.

There is no way to hide from being discovered, and while there are some tactics that allows you to try to hide, they are not perfect and one mistake can drive you to bankruptcy. The RIAA is asking the Internet Service Providers (ISP) to help in the investigations of pirating they are conducting, even when they are publicly stating that they will start taking other measurements to combat pirating you should not let your guard down.

The approach that the RIAA is taking now is to ask the ISPs to disconnect anyone from the Internet that is caught pirating any kind of material over the web. This measure is being criticized because what if you share your connection with a pirate unknowingly, and then you are going to suffer the punishment as well. The bottom line is that pirating is a crime and artists are suffering the pain because those who decide to steal music.

What is your take on piracy? What do you think of having your Internet connection down because of someone else pirating music? Have you had any kind of problems with the authorities because of Internet activities? Share your thoughts with us to help other stay out of trouble, don’t forget to follow me on twitter.