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Impact on music piracy
Negative effects of illegal music downloading
Impact on music piracy
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This paper describes various forms of DRM (Digital Rights Management), the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and methods of bypassing the afore mentioned subjects. Different forms of transmission of DRM protected material also has a direct relationship with what kind of files are protected by the DMCA and will be discussed. This paper will also discuss how law makers are attempting to halt illegal music sharing and how these attempts are in vain.
Illegal Music Swapping
Illegal digital music swapping is something that millions of people do every day, even children in the elementary school age range know how to “torrent” music from the internet. The definition of illegal music swapping is a very loose statement, since the DMCA (Digital Millineum Copyright Act) has guidelines that vary for different types of file. For instance a digital music file encrypted using the Apple DRM (Digital Rights Management) might receive more protection from the DMCA than a file that is encrypted with the Microsoft Windows Media DRM. DRM determines whether or not the device that the file is being accessed by meets the requirements for that file. In the application iTunes if your computer is not authorized to play music purchased by another user of the iTunes Store, the DRM in iTunes will detect this and will not allow you to play the song. DRM also covers a song released in one particular format for a particular player from being used for another player application, such as an iTunes DRM protected file will not play in Windows Media Player, even if the codec (language used to decipher different types of video and audio files such as .mp3, and .wma) is supported by a player the content has the DRM embedded inside of the file itself.
The fir...
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...ed “torrenting”. When something is “torrented”, it is spread across multiple computers in hundred of fragments. After someone has there “torrenting” software setup properly it tracks the fragments, downloads them, and re-assembles them into a duplicate of the original file. Torrenting is most common because it provides a degree of anonymity too music sharing, it is safety in numbers.
From the number of people involved in illegal digital music sharing, any law attempting tohalt this activity seems frivolous. Also after the original file has been modified, the DMCA does not see this file as breaking any laws because it is not exactly the same as the original. If a user torrented an original file they would be breaking the laws set forth in the DMCA, but if the user modified the file in a small way the DMCA would not be able to find this person guilty of anything.
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.
As many users see P2P software as just file sharing, entertainment industries and other big companies see it as copyright infringement and stealing from copyright owners without their rightful authorization or compensation. These companies complain that P2P file sharing threatens the survival of the industries and believe that there should be a law passed to protect the livelihood of the copyright holders.
Throughout time, people have resorted to stealing in order to obtain items instead of buying them. It became a problem so consequences were made. Even dating back to the Ten Commandments there were laws against stealing. Recently, theft has become a problem over the internet. Musicians and music companies have lost millions in revenue. Websites such as Napster, The Pirate Bay, and Pandora have made it extremely easy for people, specifically teens, to illegally download and or listen to music for free. Pirating music has become a problem especially because “91 percent of all new music was downloaded illegally over the Internet instead of purchased,” says Logan Lynn from Huffington Post (Lynn). Many, such as the RIAA claim that music piracy is “an ongoing and evolving challenge,” (Who) while others suggest that it is “keeping the music industry alive,” (Issacson).
What is considered piracy under the DMCA law? Piracy occurs when someone other than the copyright holder copies the product and resells it for a fraction of the cost that the legitimate producer charges.” Ripping a movie off the DVD and posting online or borrowing a friend’s newest version of microsoft word and downloading it are examples of digital
In all, people should be prosecuted for downloading music illegally. Stealing is stealing and there is no other way to put it. Whether it's in a file or in your physical possession there is no difference between the two. People are losing their jobs and money due to the ignorance of people downloading illegal music files. The people know they are stealing and it should be stopped for smaller fees or shorter jail time. People need to be prosecuted for their
People have been finding alternative ways to access their music since technology evolved, whether it was recording songs off the radio onto a cassette tape or borrowing your friend’s CD in order to ‘burn’ it, No one played by the rules, legally. This piece will discuss illegally downloading music and the political theories and concepts it represents. What are the social norms and attitudes that drive this behaviour? and what is the solution, if there is one?
Along with the development of a file format (MP3) to store digital audio recordings, came one of the new millennium’s most continuous debates – peer-to-peer piracy – file sharing. Internet companies such as Napster and Grokster became involved in notable legal cases in regards to copyright laws in cyberspace. These two cases are similar in nature, yet decidedly different. In order to understand the differences and similarities, one should have an understanding of each case as well as the court’s ruling.
The story really begins with Napster and its free software that allowed users to swap music across the Internet for free using peer-to-peer networks. While Shawn Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston, he wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provideddirectories, effectivelywhile actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download. Napster became the launching pad for the explosive growth of the MP3 format and the proliferation of unlicensed copyrights.
The traditional two party digital rights management system contains only owner and consumer. But it is insufficient to satisfy today’s business needs and content delivery. Hence, multiparty multilevel digital rights management architecture has been proposed [3]. The term multiparty refers to the multiple parties in the architecture such as the owner, distributors, sub-distributors and consumers and multilevel refers to the multiple levels of distributors/subdistributors, involved in the distribution chain. The DRM system handles media data in a compressed and encrypted format. The owner distributes this compressed and encrypted domain to the buyer through the multilevel distributer network, where the distributers have no access to the original content. However for providing media authentication, traitor tracing or proving the distributorship the distributors needs to watermark this media content.
Although online file sharing debuted in 1999, lawmakers and copyright industries are just beginning to address the myriad questions the practice has generated. In At Issue: Internet Piracy, authors attempt to answer some of those questions.
The first online peer to peer file-sharing application was Napster. Napster allowed people to copy music from their CDs onto their computers in mp3 format. They then allowed other members of Napster to download these songs onto their computers. Once this caught on, millions of people were downloading thousands of songs a day. And as you can imagine, this did not make the record companies happy with the idea that people were getting their music for free instead of buying the CD. It also caused a problem with some of the recording artists. Most notably Metallica.
pirate software. A user who logs on to one of these BBS can download Full
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.
P2P is used in a way that two or more computers are connected and sharing files without going through a separate server computer. Universities and Companies have been using this concept for more than 30 years. P2P network became famous after the invention of Napster in 1990. Technically most of the P2P networks are not pure peer networks because they use the central servers for some function, which makes them hybrid peer-to-peer.
Not only is downloading this media illegal, it is also morally wrong. It is our responsibility to know the difference between right and wrong - downloading this media is something that shouldn’t be done. The artists that create the CDs pay a lot of money to make the CDs for our pleasure, and in return they expect everyone to pay for their CDs (its how they make their money). In this respect, downloading illegal music through peer to peer networks is the equivalent to stealing a CD from an actual store.