Is Music Downloading A Good Idea?

Nowadays, most people can search for what they want through the Internet. The Internet has become powerful because it allows people to share or copy music, pictures, movies, software and different formats of documents. We know the Internet allows sharing of all kinds of information but that doesn’t mean it should be unrestricted. Through the Internet, people can find many materials and download them as references or for general interest, and some of these files are cheap or even free. Therefore, music downloading has become a popular way for people to get audio files. As downloading becomes a prevailing way to share information, the government decides to develop copyright laws to limit people. It can protect a creator’s rights and prevent other people from stealing original products.

According to Wicknick (n.d.), the first music piracy occurred in a radio station in 1920. That influenced writers who were losing innumerable amounts of money from to broadcasting of their works without accountability. After that, Wicknick shows has American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI) worked with Congress and the FCC to change lawmaking and to ensure that radio stations acted fairly in tracking airplay. The states that, in 1960 music piracy of people whom technology changed to tapes because tape can copy audio tracks from reel-to-reel machines. People began to understand how to use machines to copy audio tracks and sell them. In 1982 Wicknick shows how CDs surfaced in Europe and Japan and one year later they also appeared in the U.S. There was no way to burn a CD at first, but technology developed so rapidly over the past twenty years. The format of audio files became mp3; in 2003 Wicknick p...

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...t. People can use cell phone to downloading music or use powerful software to track CD and copy it Koranteng (2004) and Atwood (1997). Those technologies are unlimited, who can control it? Harrower (2005) thinks that the majority of consumers will buy music rather than copy it. As I am a violin player, I would like to share my recording on the Internet, but if music downloading such as out of controls that who wants become next sacrifice?

Overall, I am disagreeing with music downloading as a good idea, which couldn’t 100% protect artists. Many artists can take advantages of it and become famous, but did you know they still cannot get reciprocally benefit. The problem now is that the government has to administer strict law to stop illegal downloading and websites that provide it. If people cannot follow the rules, the free music downloading should be restricted.