In today's world, music is a core part of being a college student. You see proof of this on a daily basis by the thumping bass from your neighbor's room or the headphones visible from an MP3 player on students while walking to class. But where are all of these students getting all this music from? Another core part of being a college student is being continuously broke. With CDs costing upwards of ten dollars for as little as eight tracks of music, it's commonsense that college students would make up a large percentage of illegal downloader's. As a result of the massive use of free peer to peer programs the record industry has suffered greatly. They are working hard in trying hard to put a stop to it, but they can't do it alone. Shawn Fanning brought the first example of illegal downloading to us in the summer of 1999 (Abbott 2003). Fanning provided the public with downloadable tracks of music using a program known as Napster. At its prime, there were over 80 million registered users downloading from Napster (Lam 2001). Only 6 months after operation, the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) filed a lawsuit against Shawn Fanning and Napster for $100,000 per each downloaded song. The legal problem with Napster was that downloaders were not paying the due royalties to the artist and producers. Napster and its contemporary, Audiogalaxy, were not exact forms of shareware, so the RIAA was able to sue them as companies. The people who were actually doing the downloading got off scotch-free with thousands of free downloaded music tracks. As a result of the case Napster was shut down. Today we are introduced to subsequent forms of downloading, like KaZaA,Bearshare, and limewire would create a whole new kind of trouble f... ... middle of paper ... ...'t become free." Of all industries that have been revolutionized by modern technology, few have been hit as hard as the music industry. This digital era has unfortunately for music producers, made it easier than ever for consumers to get music access without paying for it. Stealing music, let alone anything in existence, is strictly against the law. Despite the legal offense of the matter, stealing music over the internet betrays the recording artists who create it. Inescapably, stealing music threatens the occupation of the thousands of working people who contributed to producing the music. In all, this sweeping music thievery is detrimental to the entire music community, and to those downloading illegally. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how copyright laws should function in the digital world, but the laws themselves are clear. So please, enjoy the music.
Singers and songwriters need to make a living somehow. They know that downloading music is a way to get their voice heard, but they also know that it is significantly hurting the business. "When your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action," said RIAA president Cary Sherman (RIAA 1). There are a lot of people involved in the music scheme when it comes to who needs to get paid by the revenue. From the sale of one CD, singers get one small fraction of the cost, another fraction goes to song writers, musicians also get some of the profit along with retailers, engineers, technicians, warehouse working, and ever...
Big time record companies and artist are losing billions of dollars due to people illegally downloading music files. The
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.
“It is estimated that such illegal product costs the music industry more than 300 million dollars a year domestically.” This is why the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is taking a strong stance against MP3 piracy. The damage done to the recording industry in lost profits, increased prices, and lost jobs is overwhelming. In an attempt to put a damper on file swapping, and recapture lost revenue the RIAA has been suing people ...
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).
Recently, there has been a series of copyright infringement litigations against Internet businesses that are involved with unauthorized distribution of music files. The US recording industry claims to lose three million dollars per year because of piracy. A report predicted an estimated 16 percent of all US music sales, or 985 million dollars would be lost due to online piracy by 2002 (Foege, 2000; cited from McCourt & Burkart, 2003) Even though this claim has to be taken with caution, as it is based on false assumption that if copyright laws were strictly enforced, audio pirates would become buyers, it is apparent that audio piracy grew to a worrisome level for the record industry. (Gayer & Shy, 2003)
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.
For these reasons, I believe that it’s not fair for music to be free. Artists receive less money from free streaming services like Spotify. Not getting paid slows down the process of making music.. Therefore, no money means no more music.
It is really easy for anyone to download music without paying or paying not very much. Which has the music industry losing money. One reason is because as long as you have internet access you can download or transfer a song without paying for it. Still people don't know that if they get a song for free you are hurting the music industry because they are not getting money they are actually losing money. You might think that they will be able to get there money back
“A thief is a thief; whether he or she steals a diamond or a feather;” this old saying is still true today. Did you ever stop to think when you download a music file from a peer to peer website it’s stealing? Many teens around the world could be fine up to over $250,000 for downloading one little song; sound crazy right? But have you ever thought about the hard work a musician’s put into their music just to be stolen? One sources quoted, “Do you think about the days, weeks, months maybe even years that we have put into writing, practicing, recording, mixing, and distrusting that song”(13).
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...
...uld emphasize the negative aspects of downloading music for free, research shows that the benefits will greatly conquer the drawbacks. By letting people download music for free, the artist will have a better chance to have his music out faster and have his music gain popularity quicker. The local bands can be heard by having free songs. Also, you’ll have your favorite song in the palm of your and. Now it’s up to the record labels and artist to not be greedy and let the music be free.
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.
Illegal downloading can also be known as piracy. Piracy is defined as stealing a piece of music in which the composer or recording artist did not give consent for. It is the stealing of music from people such as songwriters, musicians, record label employees, and everyone else who put hard work into it. There are some people who see no problem with downloading music from the Internet but it presents three main problems. The first problem is that the music will mostly likely not have g...
...e songs for free? With things like music, these rules of copyright are seldom followed. Many times, music is not distributed with the artist’s permission. The artist’s song, or even album, will often get leaked on a website before the actual album or song gets released by the artist. It connects back to one of the issues with the Internet when it comes to copyright infringement. Often times, people will try to alter the voice, beat, or tempo of a song to protect themselves from a lawsuit for copyright infringement. This can be risky, however, because artists may try and argue how the song lyrics are still theirs, even if the beat is altered slightly. Music downloaders like iTunes are better at protecting the rights of artists, because they require listeners to purchase the music they want to listen to. This helps out a lot when lawsuits could very much get involved.