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Piracy in the music industry
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Back in 2007, Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), published a report by Stephen Siwek. The report primarily focused on the economic impacts of sound recordings piracy on the U.S. economy. Piracy harms legitimate middlemen, media creators, and governments in the supply chain of media products. On the other hand, consumers of pirated media products do not enjoy some of the benefits that one would otherwise enjoy with purchases of legitimate media products (Siwek, 2007). Media products that can be pirated include music, sound recordings, films, TV programs, books, software, and video games among other media products that are produced under copyright laws. Karaganis (2011) defined piracy as unlawful copying and transmission of copyrighted media without authorization from a copyright owner, particularly when an individual intends to use the pirated media for commercial gain or achieve any other unauthorized purpose for which a particular media product is not meant. The legal landscape of piracy is blurred with lack of clear definition of piracy, especially when one backs up copies of media that he or she has legally bought for personal consumption. Despite the legal complexities that permeate into the field of media piracy and intellectual property rights, media piracy portends some adverse economic effects on revenues to media content producers as well the larger economies.
How Piracy Causes small effects the Global and the American Markets
The U.S. economy is significantly affected by media piracy more than any other country in the world. According to Siwek (2007), the U.S. holds a major stake in the media production industry because of the comparatively higher concentration of media production firms in the country. The economi...
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...players in counties like the U.S. and Australia. However, a close examination of the plummeting physical media product sales could be countered by the increasing sales of digitized media content. The techno savvy generation may not after all, be interested in downloading music or movies for unauthorized use, but just to get the entertainment services which is why online sales of digital media products is on the increase. In order to counter the effect of online piracy, media producers need to remodel their approach to business to make more money through advertising and in-app purchases the way some video game producers are doing it. Overall, the effects of piracy on the media industry could be exploited to increase income for the industry players rather than point an accusing finger without adopting the best practices that are in sync with media consumption trends.
In Charles W. Moore’s essay, “Is Music Piracy Stealing?” Moore uses great statistics of the people who are concerned and not concerned about music piracy. He gives many examples of the facts he has researched and gives an ethical appeal to his audience. “This week the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) launched an ad campaign using the slogan ‘copying is stealing,’ attempting to convey the message that digital copying is as serious and criminal as stealing a CD from a record shop or a DVD from a video shop” (Moore 242). However, throughout Moore’s entire essay he has a weak introduction and conclusion paragraph, repetitive examples, examples that do not apply to his topic and he uses many logical
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).
Richard Simmons, the lead singer of the rock band KISS, has been cited (should “as” be here? Not sure.) speaking out in a distasteful and informal manner against illegal file sharing with the following quote: “It’s only their (you should define who “they” are before this. Seems a little out of context. It seems like you are still addressing file sharing, which is what you introduce the quote as being about, but in reality, he is addressing the people who allow it, whoever they may be) fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning”(Source). In his statement, Richard encapsulates the indignation many musicians feel towards people who steal music through file sharing (also known as music piracy). This anger is warranted by the morally accepted viewpoint that stealing is unethical. Music piracy is not measly pilfering, either. “As a consequence of global and U.S.-based piracy of sound recordings, the U.S. economy loses $12.5 billion in total output annually”(Source). However, what if the unhappiness that Richard and other artists feel from illegal file sharing also caused millions of people to be happy? Would the wrongs (that) stealing music caused be morally justified by the prodigious quantity of pleasure generated by music piracy? This is a question similar to one that the founder of a philosophy known as utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, asked himself. Through the question, Bentham concluded that “[t]he highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the overall balance of...
Since early in the 1990's, software publishers have been concerned about their losses from software piracy. The music recording industry now faces a much larger threat than the software industry. Its very existence is in question as music is extensively pirated through internet downloads and copying CD's. The total cost of pirating music is estimated at $12.5 billion annually, of which $5 billion is a direct cost to the recording industry. The recording industry has experienced dropping profits and has lowered employment because of the effects of music piracy (Blyth, 2008). Many argue that as a result of music piracy, the structure of the industry must change and the era of both big record labels and superstar bands is ending (Dvorak, 2003). Nevertheless, many people, especially college students, do not seem to regard music piracy as unethical. Understanding consumer attitudes may be an important step in developing a solution to the economic problem of music piracy. This study develops a model based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) to promote further understanding of attitudes toward music piracy and how those attitudes influence music piracy behavior.
It is first beneficial to know the definition of piracy. Piracy has been characterized multiple ways from multiple disciplines. For the purpose of this paper, I will apply the definition of piracy from the 1982 United ...
With the boom of technology in China and the new capitalism ideas, China also has a huge piracy problem. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance's 2003 report on China, the piracy problem in China creates $1.85 billion in 2002 alone with 90% piracy rates for all copyrighted materials.5 This piracy problem affects negatively on China's global relations and economic improvements. China's current copyright laws are still in its teenage years, and the fast pace of technological advancement isn't helping either.
Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...
Raustiala,Kal and Sprigman, Chris, “How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy Really Hurt the U.S. Economy?” (January 12, 2012) http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and-movie-piracy-really-hurt-the-u-s-economy/ (March 31, 2014)
Music piracy is a developing problem that it affects the music industry in many different ways including being responsible for the unemployment of 750,000 workers, as well as a loss of $2,5 billion; therefore, I want to explore ‘To what extent has music piracy affected the music industry market in the United States over the last 10 years?’
Online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. These numbers seem huge: $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010 (Freakonomics). In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “can be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which in English means these figures are legitimate and that piracy really does hurt our economy.
The term "software piracy" covers different activities: illegal copying of programs, counterfeiting and distributing software - even sharing a program with a friend.
According to the book “Pirate’s Dilemma,” “Are Pirates have to scupper us? Are they a threat to be battled or innovators we should compete with and learn from?” (Matt Mason 4). Piracy has and will always be a threat to the whole media industry and of course the economy. As long as people can download for free or buy never been released movies in a cheaper price, there is no way media industries can compete with that.
Moreover, hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around. The industry gets its revenue from selling this content, whether it’s online or in stores, this funds new projects and allows for better products in the future. The public should be aware of this, downloading the content for free, and not buying it will decrease revenue for the companies, stopping them from undertaking future projects. “Production companies should lower the price on their products, I can’t buy music for at least 20$ per album and DVDs for 30$, I only make 200$ per month,” said George Issa, a music fan who spends most of his nights downloading music from the internet, “when there is an album or movie that I really like, I try to buy it legally, I don’t think I am doing anything wrong, they are wrong making money off our backs,” he added.
The first reason why downloading and uploading copyrighted materials from the Internet should be legal is that downloading copyrighted materials positively affects the economy. The European Commission Joint Research Center reported that the profits of music companies would be 2% lower if uploading and downloading copyrighted materials were banned. However, music companies are able to acquire more profits despite illegal downloading because many people tend to purchase CDs or DVDs after watching or listening to copyrighted materials for free. Moreover, the research showed that people who download music illegally spent more money to buy music than people who did not download illegally. In addition, research conducted by the Swiss government informed that one-third of Swiss people downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet because personal use of copyrighted materials is legal in Switzerland. Even though there is a fact that many people can download copyrighted materials from the Internet legally in Switzerland, the amount of money that people spend to buy copyrighted materials is not f...
Copyright infringement is a major issue with media ethics. Many people confuse copyright infringement with trademark infringement (Miller, 2012). However, copyright infringement is when someone unlawfully uses a particular work that is protected by copyright law. These works can include: movies, pictures, songs, albums, artwork, pieces of literature, and newspapers. There is no reason for any of the previous to be copyright infringed, because there are ways to correctly cite all of them as sources, without illegally copyright infringing them. Most people simply do not use their resources to help them with their citing.