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? 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. Music piracy is a socially accepted illegal practice. Understanding attitudes toward music piracy ... ... middle of paper ... ...gital download on the 14th of October 2007 (Mayfield, 2008). In Rainbows was unique from previous digital releases as it was made available to consumers on a pay-what-you-want basis from the website www.inrainbows.com. After choosing In Rainbowsfor download customers were directed to a ‘checkout’ page on the website where they were asked to specify how much money they intended to pay for the album. Essentially the customer could pay whatever they preferred and had the option of downloading the album for free. The digital version of the album was followed by a physical release to worldwide audiences via XL Recordings on December 31st. The physical release sold for US$13.98 and was housed in a cruciform box containing stickers, which was intended to provide fans with the option of creating their own packaging by re-using an old plastic jewel case (Music Week, 2007).
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
The vibrations on our eardrums make the most interesting sounds. Some vibrations turn into voices, others animal vocals, but the most common is the vibrations of music .Observing our society one can find an individual “plugged” into some form of listening device; be it a cell phone, ipod, or old fashioned listening device. Music plays a large part of every individual's life. Whether it is composed for a movie, audience or transferred through earbuds, music has always been there. But at one point or another each and every one of us has had the urge to listen to instruments with the occasional vocals or vice versa, depending on his or her style of music. Except the process to listen is not how it seems. In Charles W. Moore’s essay “Is Music Piracy Stealing,” he attempts to explain if one downloads a song without paying the composer it is taking away from working an honest living. His argument is valid but because of his limited amount of information on this topic, Moore's essay tends to fade due to poor writing style, weak analogy, and scatter brained content.
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.
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
We are different. Living amidst a new era, technology has changed our lives forever. For more than a decade, our generation had commonly been referred to as the “net generation.” Our fortune brings us life in the age of digital information, where information flows freely and knowledge is infinite. We have embraced the concept of freedom and taken several levels farther than what our forefathers imagined. Whether we realize it or not, we naturally question the unknown and demand answers to our questions (and quick answers at that). The technology we live with today was nothing more than dream decades ago. Yet with these new technologies and information at our disposal, an issue we fight against unnecessarily is file-sharing music online: a redundant issue with a clear solution. While some question its legality, arguments pushing for restrictions are both weak and lacking in support. For that reason, there should absolutely not be any restrictions on file-sharing music online as its limits would contradict traditional human behavior, and damage the music industry severely.
I’m going to be honest for a second; I am completely guilty of taking part in music piracy, having illegally downloaded music once or twice (cough) in my life, don’t judge me I’m sure you have been illegal once in your life wether its jay walking or whatever. But for those of you who have done this, it is so easy to slip into other peoples habits, like when your friends tell you about this awesome mp3 free downloader app, hey you’ve just got to try it out too right? The worst part about it is that people slave to write and produce these songs that we can receive within the click of a button; it’s kind of like getting a builder to build your house and then not paying him at the end. The New Media allows us so many options to slip through the
“Digital piracy is the act of copying digital goods that include software, documents, audio ‘including music and voice’ and video, for any reason other than to back up without explicit permission from and compensation to the copyright holder using computer technology” (Gunter, Higgins, & Gealt, 2011). The piracy of music is the most common but almost any type of digital files can be illegally downloaded from the Internet when a child knows which sites to surf. With multiple sites to choose from, an adolescent can easily enter the World Wide Web and find exactly what song or albums they would like to download. If one site does not have exactly what the individual is searching for, so many other sites will cater to their needs. This easy accessibility overrides the adolescent’s moral compass and gives them instant gratification that was totally free of
One of the biggest controversies which has spawned from the popularity of the net is the piracy of music, software, and movies. In the past, piracy of music and movies was fairly small scale. The only way to make illegal copies of tapes was to dub them in a double tape deck. This process was slow enough that music companies and movie studios didn't really worry about it. With the advancement of technology, however, piracy has become as easy as burning a CD or downloading music from the internet. The ease with which people can get free copies of songs or movies, production companies have tried to crack down on piracy.
Remember Napster, the first peer-to-peer file sharing service found in 1999 that raised a ruckus in the music industry? Through Napster, web users copied digital recordings that thousands of other users could copy for free, ultimately creating “a copying frenzy” (Rose, 2000). The birth of digital file sharing created uproar in the music industry as the opportunities for piracy escalated (Freedman, 2003). Contrary, this forced the music industry to retaliate; causing monumental changes in the way music was created, formatted, distributed and consumed. Digital technologies and the Internet transformed the traditional structure of activities in the music industry’s supply chain that followed content creation, production, promotion, distribution and consumption into a digital, interactive, multifaceted and collaborative model in which content creation, engagement and distribution between content
When it comes to piracy there are many ethical issues in the music industry. For many years the industry has been battling with music piracy, but the industry is fighting a battle that they are going to lose a...
Over the years, software piracy have become a burden on the entertainment industry. Software piracy is the unauthorized selling or copying of soft wares. This occurs by copying, selling or by downloading multiple copies of a software on personal computer without the authorization of the manufacturer. There are five common types of piracy the end user piracy, the Client-server overuse, internet piracy, Hard-disk loading and software copyrighting. According to BSA, the software industry lost 63.4 billion in revenue in 2012 due to software piracy. (Lerner)Artist spends a lot of time and hard work preparing their product therefore individuals should pay for their products, they are devaluing the artist hard work.
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)
On the demand side, the digital consumption of media products is accompanied by the emergence of digital piracy. Whilst copying had already been technically feasible during the era of video cassettes, it required certain equipment and piracy behaviour was limited (Waterman et al., 2007). The rise of the computer and World Wide Web, however, simplified the unauthorised duplication and storage of copyrighted content and caused movie piracy to soar substantially (Fetscherin, 2005). Digital piracy can generally occur offline (through the copying of discs and files) and online (through the downloading and sharing of files). A recent study revealed that approximately 24% of global internet traffic is copyright infringing, with peer-to-peer networks accounting for half of that amount (Envisional, 2011). Furthermore, internet piracy facilitates the sharing of movies during and even before their official theatrical release through either leaked insider copies or recordings in the cinema, which means that contemporary digital piracy affects all windows of the industry (Byers, 2003; Kwok, 2004).
With technology increasingly becoming better and better, a lot of activities are becoming way easier to accomplish; such as, buying and selling, but not all things becoming easier are necessarily good. Lots of people take advantage of technology these days and pirate things like music; by doing this, they are stealing lots of effort and man hours with just a few clicks. When people share this abusive power, more and more people tend to pirate and it is almost an irrevocable process. Most people pirate because they cannot afford to pay for the product they pirate or in another sense are just really lazy, but that is no excuse! People who have pirated music should be fined because they are hurting the artist; they can actually give the money back that they took instead of going to jail, and to help repair the damage they have done to the United States (U.S.) economy.
With the popularity of the Internet, sales for CDs, DVDs, Movies, and many other products have increased. Along with the increase of sales has brought forth an ever increasing problem of illegal media being downloaded. Programs such as Bittorent, Kazaa, and other direct-connect networking programs have allowed the transferring of such illegal media. Downloading song files from the Internet over a free peer to peer network is the moral equivalent of shoplifting music CDs from the local mall.