free downloading

737 Words2 Pages

Generation Free: "they just might kill the goose that lays the golden egg" (McArdle, 2010). In the article "The Freeloaders" by Megan McArdle, she explores the topic of illegal free downloading decreasing the profit to the music industry. Younger generations expects music and recently now videos to be free online, and its killing the music industry. She shares her opinion towards today's generation of file-sharers and how they are ruining the future of entertainment.

In "The Freeloaders" by McArdle, the current generation and the ones to follow are taking the music industry down by relying on illegal free downloading. McArdle makes it very clear early on in the article that the income on digital sales is decreasing, but not as fast as the decreasing money being spent on traditional sales. First of all, high-quality copies of music and movies have become easier than ever. People around the world for centuries upon end have been successfully pirating intellectual property, though over time the process has become unproblematic. Generation y (generation free) is responsible for the decline of revenues in the music industry due to lax attitudes on file sharing. Furthermore, they don't see any harm and believe that because it's so easy everyone can do it. Teenagers aged 12-17 especially say it's impractical and it would be ridiculous for any one not to use free downloads. However, these 'freeloaders' don't realize what they are doing to the music industry. Over the past ten years money being spent in the music industries has been declining because everyone is not buying as much as they were. Never the less, this problem does not only affect the music industry but also the publishing and movies industries. There is yet to be a solutio...

... middle of paper ...

...tudent'. It doesn't matter what the circumstance, this article made me realize the effect that illegal downloading has. Reading the first sentence of the article " industry revenues have been declining for the past 10 years," was when I realized the negative impact were all creating on movies and music (McArdle, 2010). As I states before, college students " see no problem with it," and teenagers think "it's unrealistic to expect people not to do it" (McArdle, 2010). This is why today's young generation is considered "generation free" (McArdle, 2010).

Illegal downloading is slowly taking out the music, movie and publishing industries. McArdle made it apparent through her article that the "freeloaders" don't recognize the effect they're creating. There either needs to me more awareness of this issue, or the industries can make it harder to reproduce their products.

Open Document