Since 2004, when he uploaded his first song to his MySpace page, singer Mike Mentz has had opportunities to perform and meet fans in over 25 countries. As he has written more songs throughout the years and has uploaded an album to iTunes, Mentz came across an issue many artists deal with: music piracy.

“Anyone [who emails me] can download six of my songs for free from my website,” said Mentz. “My hope is that people who really like those songs return the favor and spend a few of their dollars on more of my songs, or on a T-shirt or come out to a show. Most people are really cool and do exactly that, which is how I’m able to eat and travel. It’s unfortunate when some people repay that trust by stealing songs.”

According to criminal defense attorney Darryl Goldberg, the consequences for downloading or viewing illegal content range from civil fines to criminal prosecution.

“Many copyright holders will search for file sharing networks looking for illegal downloaders, particularly the people who share,” said Goldberg. “Then [the copyright holders] send a notice to the [Internet Service Provider (ISP)], alerting the ISP of each instance of copyright violation and ask that they send the notice to the downloader.”

Mentz said he believes that people who illegally download music do not think it is stealing.

“The whole ‘music should be free’ idea [that has] become popular over the last 10 years is sweet-smelling garbage,” said Mentz. “Why aren’t the same people who are stealing music online stealing cars? Because you can’t download a car on The Pirate Bay.”

According to junior Michelle Desh, she believes many teenagers consider the consequences of pirating music “a thing of the past.”

“Downloading music illegally is not necessarily fair because artists copyright their music for a reason,” said Desh. “However, a lot of my friends say that paying $1.29 for every single song is too much when you can get the song for free with the same effort.”

Despite such beliefs, Goldberg said people are routinely being threatened with civil lawsuits for copyright infringement.

Mentz said that although he has never been in the situation where someone has been caught for pirating his songs, he tries not to think about it happening because he believes he cannot do anything to stop it.

“Ultimately, if somebody wants to steal my songs, these things that I’ve spent many years and a whole lot of dollars making, they can,” said Mentz. “I just don’t want to have anything to do with them.”