How did broadband Internet connections contribute to the growth of music piracy on college campuses?

Broadband Internet connections were a critical factor in the rise of music piracy on college campuses because they provided the high-speed infrastructure necessary to facilitate the rapid transfer of large digital files.12

While the MP3 format allowed for significant data compression—making songs small enough to be shared even over older, slower modems—broadband access enabled students to serve and download music and, eventually, movie files with unprecedented ease and speed.312

This technological environment, combined with the proliferation of inexpensive personal computers on campuses, allowed students to act as both clients and servers within peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. By utilizing these high-speed connections, students could share copyrighted material across decentralized networks, effectively bypassing the central servers used by early services like Napster. Consequently, the recording industry identified these campus-based high-speed networks as a primary source of unauthorized distribution, leading to widespread legal challenges against both the software developers and the students themselves.421