About 5 years ago Napster, a network software application, was being used to download music files. The network was growing faster than anybody who ever started it would have imagined. When artists, songwriters, and all of the other people involved in making CD's realized that this wasn't going to slow down any time soon, they decided that they needed to stop Napster. Little by little, Napster was being less used and it became harder to find the songs wanted until nobody used it anymore. When all of this was happening, other applications were made available. Kazaa and Grokster are probably the two most used Peer to Peer, or P2P file sharing networks you can find, although there are many others. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants to let the public know that this file sharing that is going on is illegal. The only way to stop this is to start lawsuits. The RIAA has been making attempts for a couple years to inform the public that file sharing is illegal, but now that nothing has happened appropriate action needs to take place (RIAA 1). Singers and songwriters need to make a living somehow. They know that downloading music is a way to get their voice heard, but they also know that it is significantly hurting the business. "When your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action," said RIAA president Cary Sherman (RIAA 1). There are a lot of people involved in the music scheme when it comes to who needs to get paid by the revenue. From the sale of one CD, singers get one small fraction of the cost, another fraction goes to song writers, musicians also get some of the profit along with retailers, engineers, technicians, warehouse working, and ever... ... middle of paper ... ...nd a strong message that the illegal distribution of copyrighted works has consequences, but if individuals are willing to step forward on their own, we want to go the extra step and extend this option" (RIAA 1). The RIAA just wants the public to know that what is going on is not only wrong, but illegal. There are ways around it, use them. Singers and songwriters make something we consider to be highly valuable. You can listen to CD's in your house, in your car, and while working out. It is a very widely used form of entertainment. When you buy a CD you are getting your money's worth. Walking away from this article the reader has two choices; keep on downloading, risk getting caught and fined, depreciate the value of the music being made by forcing singers and songwriters to find day jobs, or stop downloading and buy the valuable music used greatly every day.
The RIAA believe that Napster has helped users infringe copyright. The threat of the lawsuit has been around since the conception of Napster and was actually filed four months after Napster went on line. The case is not as clear-cut as it first appears. RIAA argues that most of the MP3's on Napster's site are mainly pirated. Therefore, by Napster allowing and actually making it easier for users to download MP3's this means that they are assisting Copyright infringement.
In the lawsuit, RIAA states that Lime Wire allows its users to share unauthorized copies of their sound recordings. They do this by conducting searches for the requested recordings and making them available to their users. They purposefully did not turn
Since 1999, the situation around music has been changed drastically. In that year, the novel software “Napster” was released. With this software, people became able to get any file they want easily, sometimes illegally. Some musicians and people in the entertainment industry have tried to exterminate that P2P “Peer to Peer” technology. But it looks as if their efforts are in vain. People are going to use P2P technology more and it might as well become the official way to handle music distribution. The music industry should rather take advantage of the technology than keep trying to exterminate it.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have had a staggering growth in the past few years. Since Napster, dozens of P2P networks have been created in its imitation. Due to the growing accessibility of broadband, which increases the speed of downloads, P2P networks generate nearly 1.8 billion downloads per month. Popularity and acceptance is still continually growing.
Big time record companies and artist are losing billions of dollars due to people illegally downloading music files. The
Shawn Fanning brought the first example of illegal downloading to us in the summer of 1999 (Abbott 2003). Fanning provided the public with downloadable tracks of music using a program known as Napster. At its prime, there were over 80 million registered users downloading from Napster (Lam 2001). Only 6 months after operation, the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) filed a lawsuit against Shawn Fanning and Napster for $100,000 per each downloaded song. The legal problem with Napster was that downloaders were not paying the due royalties to the artist and producers. Napster and its contemporary, Audiogalaxy, were not exact forms of shareware, so the RIAA was able to sue them as companies. The people who were actually doing the downloading got off scotch-free with thousands of free downloaded music tracks. As a result of the case Napster was shut down. Today we are introduced to subsequent forms of downloading, like KaZaA,Bearshare, and limewire would create a whole new kind of trouble f...
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing Napster for allegedly enabling music piracy through its proprietary MusicShare program. MusicShare allows music lovers to open up their stores of MP3 files to all other Napster users. Whenever a user is online, his MP3s are up for grabs, with the only stipulation being that users upload a file for each one that they download. The RIAA says that many of the shared MP3s are illegal bootlegs, but Napster insists that it "does not, and cannot, control what content is available to [users] using the Napster browser." Citing the many legal issues of its program, Napster makes a firm case.
Everyday you probably see people talking or jogging by with earphones in, the chances of that person listening to illegally downloaded music is huge. According to the Recording Industry of America reports “63% of U.S. people illegally download music” (RIAA). Also, according to Stop Online Piracy Act (sopa)- they argue that online piracy is a larger problem than most people truly think, one that cost the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 Billion per year, and it responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. Some people understand the economic cost and problems of music piracy, others say it doesn’t matter is these superstars lose a little but of profit. But I think that if they are working hard and trying to provide entertainment for people then we should at least provide them with pay to make sure that they are still able to do what they love to do. According to the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, in 2011 was thought to be promising for record labels, as total albums sales increased by a whole 1.3%, though the industry’s struggle are still continuing for the sales then dropped 4% in 2012. The Pennsylvania Law Review also states that, as much as 95% of music is downloaded illegally yearly, for free. The quality of music being created is greatly affected by music piracy, but people are so interested in the free music people don’t take it into account.
The article explains that there are many problems with downloading music from the Internet for free. The article states that the attitude all across America is that people feel that anything that is on the Internet is considered free. Most any Internet file sharing is illegal. The music has started to sue people who share files. “Last month, the industry followed up on its September lawsuits against 261 people accused of illegally downloading music by notifying another 204 people that they would be next” (Harmon, Amy and John Schwartz par. 5). Downloading does not fairly pay artists or owners of the material being downloaded. “I presume the problem these laws are having some impact, but they’re not solving the problem,” says Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican (Harmon, Amy and John Schwartz par. 7).
...authority of obtain warrants to shut down the websites of digital pirates, however their authority ends within United States Borders (Wall Street Journal). In 2003, the RIAA developed another strategy, a massive public relations campaign that was undertaken to try and create, what the RIAA says “general sense of awareness” about pirating (Kravets pg1). Using the DMCA to launch more than 30,000 lawsuits, with damages that went up to “$150,000 per purloined music track” and ultimately, because of the massive potential judgments, most of defendants settled out of court with the RIAA (Kravets pg1). By 2008, the RIAA ended their massive lawsuit campaign and turned their attention to something that would later be called the “Copyright Alert System” and the “Six-Strike” policy. Excluding legal alternatives, it is the mildest of the RIAA efforts to try and stamp out piracy.
You kind of have to wonder if the downloading of mp3s really hurt the recording artists. When the artist makes a CD, they make relatively little money from it. Most of the millions that an artist makes is from merchandising and endorsements. Most of the money from CD sales goes to the record industries executives. In an article from Young Money, Meredith Corbin states that “the executives from the recording industry should change the way they operate by either lowering the price of CDs or taking a pay cut.
Production companies took a bold step forward by uploading their content online. People now are not obliged to buy a full album to listen to one song, for a minimal fee you can buy the track you want, the same goes for movies and electronic publications. The downloaded files though will be digitally protected so that only the person who downloads them can use them, and he can’t share them at home or with friends. Even with this step from production companies, a large portion of people who download music still do it for free. Moreover hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around.
You don`t see the artist flipping out because people are downloading their songs. In fact, they are probably glad people are trying to find ways to listen to their music. Technology has progressed to the point where the artist can’t stop their music from being uploaded, downloaded or exchanged. So really we should not pay to download music. It costs way too much, the artist will be forgotten quickly and they would be receiving money for a song that is not even really theirs to claim in the first place. Plus, when one really thinks about it most people have no intention in buying a C.D because in this generation they will only listen to one or two songs off the album. Music is essentially a part of our culture. If we were to ban downloading music a part of our culture would go
Now let’s flash forward back to present day when all that doesn’t happen anymore. Instead of saving of our money and begging our parents to take us to the store to buy a newly released album, we simply get on our computer, go to a website and download the album for free. It doesn’t matter what website it is, whether it is Limewire, Frostwire, or Pirate Bay, people will be happy with their free album. There are still some kids to this day who enjoy going to the store and buying and listening to an album the old-fashioned way but we have to wonder how bad things will get as more and more people are getting equipped with the Internet and the use of downloading music. While the internet might be making life easier for all, the growing use of downloading music on the Internet is growing into a detrimental and illegal problem.
Although there was a period where the Recording Industry Association of America (the RIAA), an organization that investigates the illegal production and distribution of sound recordings, went after a few users, including a twelve year old ...