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Piracy in the music industry
Digital music piracy
Essays on music piracy
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To Steal Music or Not to Steal Music The music industry is a very cutthroat business. Within the past few months a great deal of controversy has arisen. This controversy is based around whether copying music and sending them to friends is illegal or not. There are many different views on this but recently record companies have taken legal action against file sharers and these people who have been convicted have been given penalties for their actions regarding music copyrighting laws. Considering how these issues have been found on sections D, E, and C this topic is relatively not so important. I believe that this issue should be more important than some of the other issues because it relates closest to the people. Most of the people in America have used file sharing or at least knows someone who has tried it. The action that should be taken should be from the opinion of the people who create the music industry, the people. The first article that has to deal with music and file sharing was published on August 19, 2003, Page E03, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA). In this article the Recording Industry Association of America states that they will not pursue small violators when it comes to the illegal sharing of songs on the Internet. Also, many different people feel the RIAA is being “excessive” says that Senator of Minnesota Norm Coleman. Excessive seems to be the opinion of many people on this topic. 20 days later on April 29th, Apple came up with a potential solution to music pirating on the Internet; the story covering this topic was published on Page C11, Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA). “Two years after angering the recording industry with its "Rip. Mix. Burn" ad campaign, Apple Computer Inc. has won its cooperation in creating the Internet's least restrictive commercial music service yet. The iTunes Music Store announced by Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs yesterday draws from all five major labels in offering more than 200,000 songs at 99 cents a download - and includes some big-name artists who previously shunned online distribution” (Page C11, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 29, 2003). I think the creation of Apple’s new “solution” is not really going to get a lot of customers because, say you buy 10 songs for $.99 per download the price comes out to be around the same price of an album with 10 songs on it.
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).
A big topic that has come about is should people be prosecuted for illegally pirating online files. This includes; music, movies, programs, games and pictures. The large portion of online piracy is music. Some will argue stealing a song is as bad as stealing a car. (kain) Others will concur that song artist and record companies are losing big time bucks. Downloading music should be prosecuted as it is still stealing. Whether the person has it in their physical possession or files on their electronics it is still stealing and artist are losing money that is rightfully theirs.
An “analyst” was quoted in the case (in 2002) as saying that “people will pay for music on the Internet, eventually.” This person was skeptical of the willingness of consumers to pay for
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “ No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing.” This quote can relate to the problem that has been going on against the piracy that has been occurring for many years. It has been occurring more now since it has been becoming easier to get access to certain files online. Personally, I think that people should be prosecuted for piracy because it is illegal, morally not right, and it causes many problems for composers.
Music Copyright is a very important aspect of the music industry. The Copyright law was established to preserve the creativity and rights of authors, composers, performers of expression. Copyright is the law that protects the property rights of the creator of an original work in a fixed tangible medium. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/copyright) A fixed tangible medium is something substantial like copying lyrics on paper or putting a song on tape or CD. Copyright can be seen every where in the music industry. Many music artist of our culture today have been involved in copyright issues. Recently, on MTV news it was stated that, "As the music industry becomes increasingly concerned about protecting the integrity of artists copyrights in the age of MP3. Prince has now filed a motion in New York federal court aimed at shutting down several websites offering free downloads of the Artist's songs." (http://www.mtv.com…19990304/prince.jhtml) In addition, in recent music news, "Nine Inch Nails lead man Trent Reznor copyright infringement suit was dismissed. Another artist claimed that the Reznor had stolen material for his last album." (http://www.mtv.com…19991202/nine_inch_nails.jhtml) The copyright law has become an important legal aspect to know our music generation.
Upshaw, D., & Babin, L. A. (2010). Music downloading: Competing against online piracy. International Journal of Business & Public Administration, 7(1), 14-26. Retrieved from EBSCOhost
...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.
The most well known source for such content was once the pioneer of the P2P technology, Napster. While Napster has battled with lawsuit after lawsuit, the owner finally gave up the fight against the RIAA (Recording Industry Associates of America)...
The music industry, as represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has gone procedures in fighting both copyright infringement and piracy. Accordingly, as shown in the report of Arbor Networks, the overwhelming 40 percent of net traffic that shares music through peer-to-peer connection has rapidly decreased to just 18 percent in the year 2009. RIAA has sued internet fans who commit infringement. Furthermore, the association has also presented piracy surcharges on ISPs which offer an upgrade to peer-to-peer connections for fast downloads at a fee, and websites which provide free searches and downloads for music.
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.
As policy makers turn their attention to the viability of the U.S. economy in the global marketplace, it seems obvious that the problem of music piracy should be afforded a high place on the policy agenda in coming years. “(Stephen E. Siwek)
The music industry started in the mid 18th century with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through the decades there has been a great increase in this industry; however, the revenues for this industry have declined by half in the last 10 years. This has been caused by music piracy, which “is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent” . After 1980’s, when the Internet was released to public, people started to develop programs and websites in which they could share music, videos, and information with...
The record industries says that on an average about 165 million song files are traded through university networks.(CBC News) Some of the biggest record companies like EMI, Sony, and Warner are not too pleased with people illegally downloading their songs without paying for them. As these industries take their fight to court, many downloaders in America are in jeopardy of facing fines of over $100,000 for each track they have downloaded or shared on the net. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says that because of illegal downloading, they have lost huge amounts of money and record sales have plummeted. A worker from the RIAA says, "Anyone who is caught making this music available, or downloading it, will be tracked down and taken to court" (CBBC).
Piracy in the music and film is an ever-growing issue that people who choose to join the industries must live with and adapt to as technology and times change. The issue with piracy is not as cut and dry as people perceive. There are many people who lose serious cash from illegal downloading and streaming; on the other hand, there are those whose entire careers have been made from free streaming or downloading and would not be where they are today if it weren’t for piracy.
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.