Joel Tenenbaum was doing what many teenagers in America do regularly: download music from a file-sharing program. For most kids, the punishment for this technically illegal act ends with a stern motherly talking-to. But for Tenenbaum, it was the beginning of a saga that landed the Boston University undergraduate in court.

Fortunately, Tenenbaum has a friend on the other side of the Charles—Harvard Law School professor Charles R. Nesson ’60, who has taken on Tenenbaum’s case.

“I was downloading music from Kazaa, and before I know it, a letter came to my parents,” Tenenbaum said in an interview yesterday.

That letter directed Tenenbaum to call a hotline run by the Recording Industry Association of America, asking the teenager to pay for his seven illegal downloads. Tenenbaum refused to pay. After his refusal, the RIAA brought a suit.

Nesson, who could not be reached for comment because he has been traveling, has written on his Web site that the recording industry organization is trying to intimidate others through its actions against Tenenbaum.

“The plaintiffs and the RIAA are seeking to punish him beyond any rational measure of the damage he allegedly caused,” Nesson wrote. “They do this, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by Joel’s individual action, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using computers, and so frightening to parents and teachers of students using computers, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future.”

Current Harvard undergraduates were split on whether they agreed with Nesson’s argument.

“Until the RIAA is able to offer consumers a reasonable alternative to buying entire CDs or records, this case against Joel is essentially extortion,” said Randall Baldassarre ’10. “If other alternatives like iTunes come to the marketplace, then it becomes a different story.”

Xiahui Dung ’12 disagreed, saying that piracy harms the industry and might decrease the amount of music that is produced.

“If the illegal downloading is causing a large enough financial loss to the record companies, by all means, they should sue. Otherwise, their profit-motive will be gone and we won’t get any more music,” Dung said.

Tenenbaum said he believed that the future, if not the law, is one his side.

“We don’t want to let a private entity like the RIAA stem the tide of a digital future,” Tenenbaum said.