Downloading illegal music does not really hurt the artists therefore it should be legal. Under the United States copyright laws, people who use programs to illegally download music for no fee at all are breaking the law but this is why it should be made legal (Math). There are millions and millions of people every day who download music off of the internet illegally. How will the authorities ever catch everyone doing it? I’m saying that there is no possible way of catching each and every one who downloads music illegally. There are far too many people who do it every day for the government or someone to do something and give each of them consequences. There are some people that have gotten some serious fines and jail time for downloading and distributing their illegally downloaded music but I think that this should stop. There is a story on a guy named Joel Tenenbaum that downloaded only thirty songs and had to end up paying $675,000 to four different record labels. "That to me sends a message of 'We considered your side with some legitimacy,'" he said. "$4.5 million would have been, 'We don't buy it at all (Lavoie).'" He is filing for bankruptcy as a student at the age of 25 just because he downloaded thirty songs which would have only been around thirty dollars if he had downloaded them legally. Now he’s in debt and it will take years to get back to where he started out before this charge. Music companies need to accept that illegally downloading is a fact in the twenty first century and will never go away (Michaels). Between the years of 2004 and 2009 there was an estimated 30 billion songs downloaded illegally worldwide (Adkins). There is also a study that shows that the people who do download all this music illegally are th... ... middle of paper ... ...ho Pirate Content."Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Gale, 18 Oct. 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2014. . Lavoie, Denise. "Jury Orders Student to Pay $675,000 for Illegally Downloading Music." Abc News. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. . Michaels, Sean. "Illegal Downloading Is Here to Stay." The Guardian. N.p., 4 Aug. 2008. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. . Rothman, Lily. "Illegal Music Downloads Not Hurting Industry,Study Claims." Time Entertainment. Taboola, 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. . Shields, Rachel. "Illegal Downloaders 'spend the Most on Music', Says Poll." The Independent. N.p., 1 Nov. 2009. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. < www.independent.co.uk >. Tait, Adam. "Report Claims Illegal Downloads Do Not Harm the Music Industry." Gigwise. N.p., 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. < www.gigwise.com >.
... report also explains that illegal downloading of movies and TV have nearly halved “with 65 million film and 55 million TV shows illegally downloaded in 2012, compared to 125 million and 135 million respectively in 2008.”
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...
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).
Big time record companies and artist are losing billions of dollars due to people illegally downloading music files. The
The music recording industry is in trouble. For several years now, sales of new and popular music have steadily declined and show no sign of changing. The record companies are quick to blame the growing popularity of the Internet; music is being traded in a digital form online, often anonymously, with the use of file-sharing programs such as Morpheus, KaZaA, and Imesh, to name a few. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) succeeded in disbanding the pioneer Internet file-sharing program, Napster, but is facing confrontation with similar programs that are escaping American copyright laws. While there is an obvious connection between declining popular music sales and increasing file sharing, there is more going on than the RIAA wants to admit. I will show that the recording companies are overpricing their products, and not sufficiently using the Internet as an opportunity to market and sell their products. I shall begin by describing in greater detail the problem that the recording companies are facing, as well as the growing epidemic of online music trading. From there, I will show the correlation between the two and describe the other factors affecting record sales, and how these trends could be turned around to help the industry.
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
"4 Ways In Which Internet Piracy Can Be a Good Thing." MakeUseOf. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
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.
There are a lot of people who download music and movies without paying. The main reason that this is such a big issue is because piracy substitutes for a legitimate transaction; for example, someone who would have originally bought a DVD of the movie Young Guns but instead downloads it for free on The Pirate Bay. In this case, the person pirating the movie or song would never have bought it. This happens frequently if the “pirate” lives in a relatively poor country, like China, and is simply unable to afford to pay for the films and music he or she downloa...
The first reason why downloading and uploading copyrighted materials from the Internet should be legal is that downloading copyrighted materials positively affects the economy. The European Commission Joint Research Center reported that the profits of music companies would be 2% lower if uploading and downloading copyrighted materials were banned. However, music companies are able to acquire more profits despite illegal downloading because many people tend to purchase CDs or DVDs after watching or listening to copyrighted materials for free. Moreover, the research showed that people who download music illegally spent more money to buy music than people who did not download illegally. In addition, research conducted by the Swiss government informed that one-third of Swiss people downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet because personal use of copyrighted materials is legal in Switzerland. Even though there is a fact that many people can download copyrighted materials from the Internet legally in Switzerland, the amount of money that people spend to buy copyrighted materials is not f...
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.
Music piracy is a developing problem that it affects the music industry in many different ways including being responsible for the unemployment of 750,000 workers, as well as a loss of $2,5 billion; therefore, I want to explore ‘To what extent has music piracy affected the music industry market in the United States over the last 10 years?’
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.
Knorr, Caroline, “Illegal Downloads: When Sharing Becomes Stealing” (November 19, 2010) https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/illegal-downloads-when-sharing-becomes-stealing (March 31, 2014)
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.