Illegally Downloading Music

Illegally Downloading Music In the past ten years Internet music sharing has become a huge issue in the recording industry. Recording companies are furious, claiming that file swapping is destroying their album sales and greatly hurting the artists. Music consumers are justifying their actions by stating that album prices are outrageously high. In Anthony Gorry’s essay, “Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft?”, the author demonstrates how illegal downloading of music is becoming a huge problem in today’s generation. Illegal downloading needs to remain a crime because it affects the artist, the individuals that perform the crime, and the music industry. When music is downloaded illegally, the artist suffers. This is one of the primary reasons why downloading free music should remain illegal. When a person illegally downloads a song from a website, that is one less potential sale for the music artist. Teenagers and students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players (Sabbagh). One reason people may not care about illegally downloading music because they think that music artists already make enough money. Well, that certainly is not true in the case of music artists who aren’t very popular. Furthermore, even if the artist already has a lot of money, who is anyone to judge how much they should be making. They earned the money, so they have a right to it. Another problem that occurs for music artists when their music is downloaded illegally is, often, the downloaded song isn’t of good quality. Occasionally, if people are downloading a song from one of these websites, they are not really getting the best quality of music available. Usually the song has been burned or reproduced a few different times. The quality of the artist’s hard work is being destroyed and it makes the artist look bad and lose fans. In apparent frustration, some music companies have introduced defective copies of their music into the file-sharing environment of the Internet, hoping to discourage widespread downloading of music (Gorry 389). A musician puts many hours of time and effort into writing and recording their music, expecting to have a large sum of money being made from it. But after it’s been released to the public, they make far less than they expected. Illegally downloading music affects the individuals that download it negatively as well. Many of the programs and websites people download illegal music from are not trustworthy. These websites contain viruses that will maliciously attack an individual’s computer from downloading one of these songs. Websites like these are not really controlled by anybody, so any sort of material can get through. In people’s quest to find music to download music illegally, it may damage their computer. When they need to repair the computer to get fixed, it will cost a decent sum of money to clean up all the viruses they have probably contracted from the downloading. Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to purchase the music illegally? Illegally downloading of music also has serious consequences if you are caught. Online infringement of copyrighted music can be punished by up to 3 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Repeat offenders can be imprisoned up to 6 years. Individuals also may be held civilly liable, regardless of whether the activity is for profit, for actual damages or lost profits, or for statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringed copyright (Sabbagh). One of the most important influences that Internet piracy has had on the music industry is the sale of retail CDs. Until the past few years, CD sales were one of the key things that music industry insiders used in order to find out which musicians and albums were the most popular with the public. As the world’s technology has been growing, it made the digital music and internet piracy growing too, sales of retail CDs dropped amongst younger consumers to such an extent that the best selling CDs on the market began to bear very little resemblance to the music that was actually popular with the young listeners that form the backbone of the music industry. For example, Bob Dylan’s album Modern Times quickly became the number one best seller when it was released in 2006, despite the fact that none of his tracks were highly requested on mainstream radio programs or popular with younger listeners (Sabbagh). The recording industry has succeeded in making downloading illegal. They have even been successful in subpoenaing companies to give up names of their employees suspected of illegal downloading. They are now trying to hold ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) accountable for the illegal downloading of consumers. People are beginning to be brought to justice and illegally downloading music needs to remain a crime in our society.

Works Cited
Gorry, Anthony. “Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft?” Subject & Strategy A Writer’s Reader. Ed. Paul Eschholz and Alfred Rosa. 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.388- 391.Print.

Sabbagh, Dan, ed. "Average Teenager 's IPod Has 800 Illegal Music Tracks." Editorial. The Sunday Times June-July 2008. Technology. Web. 5 Oct. 2011. <http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article41445 85.e ce>.

Cited: Gorry, Anthony. “Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft?” Subject &amp; Strategy A Writer’s Reader. Ed. Paul Eschholz and Alfred Rosa. 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.388- 391.Print. Sabbagh, Dan, ed. "Average Teenager 's IPod Has 800 Illegal Music Tracks." Editorial. The Sunday Times June-July 2008. Technology. Web. 5 Oct. 2011. &lt;http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article41445 85.e ce&gt;.