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The Recording Industry Association of America knows if you’ve been bad or good – and it wants you running scared.

On May 26, an additional 91 college students were sued for illegal file sharing, and for the first time, seven of the defendants are UCLA students.

The RIAA says sharing music is a crime similar to other forms of stealing – i.e., downloading or sharing a song is the equivalent of stealing a candy bar from a store. On some levels the RIAA might be correct; sharing music without consent is illegal, and record companies have the right to seek reasonable punishments.

But the RIAA uses its power to sue individuals as a weapon meant to strike fear in people via the threat of tremendous – and unreasonable – penalties.

In fact, the recording industry shares much of the blame for the current state of affairs. It is unfortunate (one could almost say criminal) that it has resorted to targeting colleges for lawsuits. Students from 51 colleges have been the recipients of RIAA lawsuits since April.

The studios of the RIAA ripped customers off for years with expensive CDs and ignored the constructive potential of the Internet. The industry essentially waited for the release of Apple’s iTunes Music Store in April 2003 before it had a serious answer to illegally sharing music online.

More generally, the RIAA’s response to file sharing hasn’t been to make music more affordable or accessible. Instead, the RIAA spent its energy and money lobbying for extreme punishments for those who share their files.

Let’s look at the comparison of stealing a candy bar and the punishment it carries. Stealing anything worth less than $400 is considered petty theft and is punishable by no more than six months in jail, a fine of $1,000, or both.

But in reality, few petty thieves receive the maximum penalty, especially for first offenses. In some cases, California law permits the victims of minor crimes to completely forgive the perpetrator.

Even a more serious crime like driving under the influence is counted as a misdemeanor for the first offense, with a punishment of 96 hours to six months in jail.

But sharing 10 or more “phonorecords” with a total value of $2,500 or more can result in up to five years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and civil penalties.

And a new law signed by President Bush makes possessing a single unreleased song or movie a crime that can result in up to 10 years in federal prison.

In the past, equally ridiculous penalties have been proposed by the attack dogs of the recording industry.

In 2003, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Van Nuys, introduced legislation that would have made uploading a single song or movie over the Internet carry a penalty of five years in federal prison.

Instead of fixing their own industry model, the RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America use their political clout to push for harsher and harsher punishments for file sharers. Copyright owners deserve to profit from their work, but they must moderate their desire to punish with the understanding that copyright infringement is not a violent crime.

It is the responsibility of both the studios and the politicians to make sure the punishment fits the crime.