Digital music piracy has been a worry of the music industry since the creation of Napster in 1998. Piracy is the act of stealing something that does not belong to you which has been outlined in our society as something that is bad or against the law. There are many articles out there that highlight music piracy but four main important ones include: “The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era” by Jelle Janssens, “Neutralizing Music Piracy: An Empirical Examination” by Jason R. Ingram, “The Impact of Digital Piracy on Music Sales: A Cross-Country Analysis” by Mark T. Bender, “Charismatic Code, Social Norms, and the Emergence of Cooperation on the File-Swapping Networks” by Lior Jacob Strahilevitz and many other articles. “According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), CD sales have been falling continuously from 2.5 billion units in 2000 to 1.8 billion in 2006. This decline is without doubt hurting the music industry since CD sales still account for a crucial part of the recorded music sales” (Ingram 335). Napster also changed the way computers were made. Before the music downloading craze, computer did not come standard with disc burners, now in almost every computer manufactured it is almost a must that computer comes with a burner and the newer models even come with DVD burners. All of these gadgets now come standard in computers. The convenience of digital music piracy has record sales low with an alarming rate of free music. With technology on the rise it was only a matter of time before digital music piracy took effect. Napster came into the world and changed the way music has been distributed ever since. Music piracy involves the act of making available, transmit... ... middle of paper ... ...eersharing/a/torrenthandbook.htm>. Ho, Kevin, Wu Jie, and John Sum. "On the session lifetime distribution of Gnutella." International Journal of Parallel, Emergent & Distributed Systems 23.1 (2008): 1-15. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Apr. 2011. Ingram, Jason R. "Neutralizing Music Piracy: An Empirical Examination." Deviant Behavior 29.4 (2008): 334-366. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 16 Mar. 2011. Janssens, Jelle. "The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era." European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law & Criminal Justice 17.2 (2009): 77-96. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 16 Mar. 2011. Strahilevitz, Lior Jacob. "CHARISMATIC CODE, SOCIAL NORMS, AND THE EMERGENCE OF COOPERATION ON THE FILE-SWAPPING NETWORKS." Virginia Law Review 89.3 (2003): 505. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Apr. 2011.
A popular program easily accessible on the Internet is called Napster. After you download it from Napster’s site, you basically tell it where you keep your Mp3 files and when it connects it cross-references everyone’s files and lets you search through them all and download as you please. 90% of the files that are traded daily are illegally “ripped” from CDs. Napster has a blurb at startup that states “Copying or distributing unauthorized Mp3 files may violate United States and/or foreign copyright laws. Compliance with copyright law remains your responsibility.” The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is charging the site with copyright infringement and alleges that Napster has created a base for music piracy on an unprecedented scale. Napster contends that they provide the platform, not the actions, and that as the blurb states it’s up to the people. Napster is not at fault because the RIAA has overstepped their boundaries and infringed on first amendment rights online.
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
Before the present time of computers and various media player technology, trading music files on the internet was practically unheard of. Today MP3 music files have become file format that is widely “swapped” over the internet. The problem with trading MP3's is that it violates copyright laws. However, this hasn’t stopped the tens of millions of file sharing software users who continue swap MP3’s. MP3 piracy is a costly business for many companies, and the disadvantages outweigh the advantages of “P2P” file sharing. File sharing is a costly, illegal practice that hurts not only the consumers, but the artists as well.
Thierer, Adam D., and Clyde Wayne Crews. "Napster." Copy fights: the future of intellectual property in the information age. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2002. 108-120. Print.
The entertainment industry and many musicians regarded P2P as a big crisis for copyright, so that they sued the company that produced Napster. “Anger leads Metallica to the Internet,” an article by Karen Schubert in USA TODAY, noticed that heavy-metal band Metallica was suing Napster. And now some people in the music industry are fighting with a distributor of P2P software even in the Supreme Court, and lobbying to outlaw P2P technology. In “File sharing goes to High Court,” USA ...
Napster creates a threat to the music industry, which includes Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and well-known musical groups, because it diminishes their distribution control, record sales and lowers their profit. The music industry must continue to take legal action against Napster to eliminate its negative impact.
The music industry has had problems with computer piracy for many years now. There have been many programs devoted to giving out free music. Many of these programs are well know, but still very hard to stop. Napster, Kazaa, and the newest program, myTunes Redux are the most popular programs for music sharing. This essay will explain all about these main programs which allow free music to be shared all over the world.
The Internet, by making free and non-free online distribution of music, has profoundly affected how business is conducted in the record industry in terms of distribution channels, copyright and the economic structure of the major players in the global market. Initially, the Internet was viewed as an opportunity by some of the major players as a new channel of promotion. However, after the existence of Napster and few others, the majority considered it as threat because of the increase in the free file sharing. Consequently, for the Internet to be an opportunity for the major players, they had to adopt new business model in terms of distribution for online customers while keeping their conventional distribution channels. Early response to this threat was searching for technological solution in order to prevent piracy, going to court to sue for copyright infringement, the five major players and others offered their own authorized online distribution joint venture, all in attempt to keep their power in the market.
Janssens, Jelle, Stijn Vandaele, and Tom Vander Beken. “The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era.” European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law & Criminal Justice 17.2 (2009): 77-96. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 20 Jan. 2011.
...ant annual decline in the sales of music albums. Music companies are facing heavy loss in revenue as more and more people are developing the habit of downloading music for free. This loss affects in cutting down the salaries of artists. After spending enormous amount of time to produce a good music, artists could not get sufficient income and this forms a deep wound within the heart of artists. Consequently, some artists or musicians lose their confidence in creating better music due to the sales of their albums are not promising. Many artists are forced to leave this profession as their creativity is not appreciated by the public. Therefore, Music piracy not only affects the music companies and artists, but it also brings negative effects to all of us as well. Therefore, everyone should stand against music piracy so that this negative trend will end in one day.
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.
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...
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...
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.
Napster is a company that developed the so-called peer-to-peer technology that lets people search and retrieve music files directly from one another's personal computers. When Napster first came out, millions of internet users worldwide were illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted music, videos, images, and software for free. After being vilified by the entertainment industry, which claims that Napster and any similar programs could make piracy of almost any digital work unstoppable, and many court battles, Napster was ordered by court to be shutdown in 2000. The technology has been praised as a revolutionary development for the Internet—unaware of the problems that would arise from such practices. However, the termination of Napster was not enough, months later, dozens of new, like programs were being developed and used. And since Napster, not much has been done to stop these latest downloading programs.