Downloading All Music Should Be Made Legal
In 1999, an 18-year-old college dropout named Shawn Fanning revolutionized the music industry with the program he invented called Napster. Napster was an internet program that made it possible for users to share music files for free. His product gained instant interest across America which brought an opposite response from the Music industry. In 2001, as expected, Napster was sued for copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and shut down at the peak of its success. The media industry wanted the technology halted because it was terrified of how it would affect the economy. Nonetheless, new programs are rising to take Napster's place and history is repeating itself as the music industry is killing its chances for a potential profit.
With so many active participants downloading music, there is always going to be another site to find free music, so attempting to rid the internet of all downloading is nothing more than a hopeless situation. No matter how many download programs have lawsuits filed against them and are forced to shut down; another site will take its place. “This is the age of technology”, the RIAA stated, “It's not realistic to wipe it out entirely but instead to bring it to a level of manageable control so a legitimate marketplace can really flourish.” There will always be a way to get around barriers that may get in the way and therefore the war against piracy will never be over unless a common ground is established. So instead of trying to rid the idea of downloading music all together, more emphasis should be put on the regulation of sharing of files or at least the supervision of the files. This movement to progressive downloadi...
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...they all fall into the same category. In the search for legality, there is no viable option but to accept the ability and determine personally whether the service will be utilized or not, easy as that.
Why should legality or illegality hinge on such a delicate situation? Advances in technology shouldn’t be determined on the restricting views of what seems to be right or wrong. (Howard Edinburgh, Vintage Cask) “We no longer view ourselves as eccentric for standing behind what we don’t understand, but as visionaries for standing up for the better cause.” Pulling back the restrictions of music downloading is the only way to fully realize the long term potential. If the pressure was removed from unauthorized downloading services, then who knows what media breakthroughs could come as a result. For these reasons, all music downloading should be termed legal and accepted.
We have all watched over the last year and a half as the controversy over the digital music provider Napster has clogged our television screens and lined our floors in the forms of newspaper articles. We are also well aware of the implications and revenue losses that the service either directly or indirectly causes. What I am going to investigate more in-depth in this article is, more specifically, the effect that Napster has on the operations of record stores worldwide. I am going to try to describe the most profound effects that Napster has on this industry.
One of the newest, most exciting and innovative ways to get music these days is not in the mall and not at a huge mega-sized electronic store, it's not even by a mail order CD club. It’s the computer. It sits conveniently on a desk and now allows access to every imaginable genre of music, twenty-four hours a day, rain or shine, snow or sleet, in the comfort of your own home. Technology is changing the way we listen to music. Now downloading a Mp3 from the Internet is a lot easier than going to the store and buying an overpriced CD. A near CD quality digital recording of music, Mp3s are digital computer files compressed to make them readily available over the Internet. It seems the high prices, new technology, and availability are causing most music lovers to turn to this new form of music media to combat their expensive addiction to compact discs. It has become so simple to search out and download music that more and more people are finding it favorable to just copy their music to a recordable CD (CD-R). That would mean people could, from their own home, create illegal copies of the copyrighted material at or near industrial compact disc quality. Further adding to consumer accessibility, manufacturers now produce portable MP3 players , so now the need to buy CD-R’s is eliminated and you can just...
McArdle argues that although music file-sharing is easily assessable and available in the millennium generation, free music file-sharing is causing damage to individuals involved in the music industry and in the entertainment industry. McArdle starts off the article by mentioning that record labels suffer the most financially in the year 2009. She also mentions that for the last decade, record labels business are experiencing decreases in revenues. McArdle criticizes the millennium generation for violating property rights of recording labels and the music industry. Moreover, McArdle points out that many young people in this millennium generation are the ones who are downloading music for free. She discusses how hard it was for people to look for music and to copy music in the past history compared to the present. She also points out that young people in the millennium generation do not see downloading music for free as a huge problem. She concludes her article by stating that perhaps music piracy is not such a negative trend. Although it affects individua...
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.
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).
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?
In this case, there are three main effects of Napster on the recording industry. The first one is that it caused a large decline in record sales in a short time. According to this case, the spending on recorded music in U.S dropped 4.1% in 2001 and the industry’s top 10 albums also sold much less compared to the year before. The second effect is that it cased the sales of CD burners, blank CDs and digital audio players increase and nowadays, most new computers come with CD-RW drives installed, which means people can easily store downloaded music, share music with friends and take it with them anytime as well. The third effect is that it increased the cost of recorded music. Once people can download free music through peer-to-peer software services, they have less incentive to buy original editions, which will make recording industry spend more to fight against copyrights and invest more in new artists and new music. Overall, these three effects make the recording industry go through a hard time.
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.
Nowadays, it is extremely easy to download free music from the internet. All someone has to do is download some peer to peer file-sharing application such as Kazaa, Edonkey, Blubster, or Bearshare, and you have unlimited access to download just about anything that you please. But is downloading free music from one of these applications legal? I think that it is. This paper will look at both sides of the argument.
Many people who use the Internet regularly have downloaded some kinds of copyrighted materials such as music and movies. However, should it be illegal to protect copyrighted materials more strictly? Today, downloading and sharing copyrighted materials is illegal in many countries such as Japan and the United States. In fact, people who share copyrighted materials get fines or jail sentences. For example, according to Yahoo Movies, a man from Gunma Prefecture in Japan was arrested for uploading a movie, the Wind Rises, in 2014. Nevertheless, downloading and sharing copyrighted materials should be legal for the economic growth and for artists.
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 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...
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.
At the dawn of the internet, many things such as books and text became obsolete, due to insufficient monitoring of internet activity and sites. Individuals were able to gain free access to books and publications that normally needed to be bought, or required a fee. This is something that has caused problems for booksellers and publishers. Now, as technology advances, it also begins the decline of music, software, and television industries—but something can be done before it’s too late. Illegal downloading is a problem that affects us all, either directly or indirectly. Many people do not take it too seriously. They have not realized that it is an epidemic; like a disease that keeps growing as people become more knowledgeable about computers and learn more about how software runs. People openly burn music CDs and download music and movies for friends who in turn give it to their friends; it’s a never-ending cycle on illegal practices. The problem started when Napster came out and should have ended when it was shutdown. Unfortunately, not enough has been done to stop the illegal transfer of files. It’s time someone takes full action and ends this detrimental offense.
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.