Music Piracy
Arrrggghhhh, I 'm A Music Pirate
How do you know you are not a thief? Downloading free music from the internet without permission from the copyright holder constitutes stealing. In the last six years record sales have dropped and illegal downloads have increased significantly. There are two different organizations that are actively participating in the solution to this problem. There are people in the music industry who stand on both sides of the fence. Some say that downloading music without permission is against the law, harmful to the industry and must be stopped, while others believe there is a way to legalize downloads by compensating the copyright holders through indirect payment plans. The Recording Industry Association of America is leading an effort to stop illegal production and distribution of sound recordings through the use of education, enforcement, and litigation. The Electronic Freedom Foundation supports the legalization of shared music over the internet and proposes many solutions to this problem, the strongest of which is voluntary collective licensing. A final solution to this problem is a concept of "free music" to its audience while still getting artists and those involved in recording their music compensated. The internet has made it easy to share music files and illegal file traders have not been receptive to change their ways. Artists can use the marketing power of their "free music" on the internet alone to sell the products that have always compensated them the most, concert tickets and merchandise. File sharing online has increased significantly in the last few years. According to research conducted by BigChampagne, a company that monitors file-sharing, "at any moment 8.3 million people were online sharing files in June of 2004 up from 6.8 million in June the year before" (Metz 112). The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) reports that records sales have dropped significantly each year since 2000, which they
How do you know you are not a thief? Downloading free music from the internet without permission from the copyright holder constitutes stealing. In the last six years record sales have dropped and illegal downloads have increased significantly. There are two different organizations that are actively participating in the solution to this problem. There are people in the music industry who stand on both sides of the fence. Some say that downloading music without permission is against the law, harmful to the industry and must be stopped, while others believe there is a way to legalize downloads by compensating the copyright holders through indirect payment plans. The Recording Industry Association of America is leading an effort to stop illegal production and distribution of sound recordings through the use of education, enforcement, and litigation. The Electronic Freedom Foundation supports the legalization of shared music over the internet and proposes many solutions to this problem, the strongest of which is voluntary collective licensing. A final solution to this problem is a concept of "free music" to its audience while still getting artists and those involved in recording their music compensated. The internet has made it easy to share music files and illegal file traders have not been receptive to change their ways. Artists can use the marketing power of their "free music" on the internet alone to sell the products that have always compensated them the most, concert tickets and merchandise. File sharing online has increased significantly in the last few years. According to research conducted by BigChampagne, a company that monitors file-sharing, "at any moment 8.3 million people were online sharing files in June of 2004 up from 6.8 million in June the year before" (Metz 112). The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) reports that records sales have dropped significantly each year since 2000, which they
Cited: "2005 Year End Statistics." Table. Recording Industry Association of America. 24 April 2006 . "File-Sharing: It 's Music to our Ears: Making P2P Legal." EFF. 28 Apr. 2006. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 1 May 2006 . McBride, Terry. "P2P Suits Make No Sense For Music Business." Billboard 4 March 2006. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Getchell Lib., University Nevada. 19 Apr. 2006 . McLeod, Kembrew. "MP3s Are Killing Home Taping: The Rise of Internet Distribution and Its Challenge to the Major Label Music Monopoly." Popular Music and Society 28.4 (2005): 521-532. AHSearch. OCLC First Search. Getchell Lib., University Nevada of Reno. 1 May 2006 . Metz, Cade. "Sharing: Now Serving Up Music, Movies, Software, and More." PC Magazine. 21 Sept. 2006. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Getchell Lib., University Nevada. 1 Mar. 2006 . RIAA.com. 2006. Recording Industry Association of America. 5 Mar. 2006 . "RIAA V. The People: Two Years Later." Electronic Frontier Foundation. San Francisco: EFF, 2004. Silverthorne, Sean. "Music Downloads: Pirates-or Customers?" HBS Working Knowledge For Business Leaders. 21 June 2004. President and Fellows of Harvard Business School. 1 May 2006 . "What the RIAA is Doing About Piracy." RIAA. 27 Apr. 2006. Recording Industry Association of America. 1 May 2006 .