Ripped: How The Wired Generation Revolutionized Music

Music is a great place to show creativity and be yourself, right? But what happens whenever an artist pours all of his creativity into a song, and he puts it up for sale. Potential sales, in a perfect market, would be pretty high. But introduce file-sharing, and the sales are cut by about one third of the original amount. File-sharing is an activity in which one user downloads something from another user’s files. Online piracy stems from this, as one person downloads something, either legitimately or illegitimately, and then puts it up on some kind of site for others to download and use. Piracy comes into play when it is downloaded by another, and may even potentially find its way into the hands of someone who wants to claim it as their own,
invoking plagiarism. How does music piracy relate to plagiarism, and how does it affect a student in a learning environment? I plan on answering it by going over how music piracy and plagiarism are almost identical in practice, but with slight difference. Music piracy can impact a student’s life by showing them just how easy it is to use another’s work without obtaining it with permission.
Music transitioned to an online marketplace soon after the internet had been developed.
The internet provided a place for music of all kind to be heard and sold for many people. Greg Kot, the author of “The Music Industry has been Revolutionized” asserts that the old music industry is dying out and the online market is growing every day. As a music critic and author of the book Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, he states, “With the old model of record labels, bands, and music distribution gradually disintegrating, fans and musicians have created many niche markets and communities on their own.” The online market is allowing for many artists and fans to find and make their own categories for
music.
The online marketplace provided consumers with a place to find music they couldn’t find prior to its existence. Kot, the author of “The Music Industry has been Revolutionized” asserts that those who depend upon the big media companies finds that not everything they want is in their markets. As a music critic, he states, “Perhaps the consumer who depends on the big media companies to bring him music is dissatisfied by the dearth of choices. But the fan who is active in the niche music communities thriving on the Net is having a ball discovering, discussing and downloading new music.” Basically, the consumers are being satisfied more by the wide range of availability on the internet marketplace than from the big media companies who practically owned the music industry prior to this.
The online marketplace is slowly shutting out the real world market. Kot asserts that the musical market is no longer dependant on the consumers just being willing to buy anything specific, as they have a market where everything is available to them. As a music critic, he states, “Consumers are no longer just a marketing demographic, a faceless entity to which corporations market and sell products. They're becoming collaborators, co-conspirators, creative partners with the artists they love. That intimacy is the key to remaking the world. All great artists over time have had their benefactors and patrons. The Internet makes it possible for a creative talent to have more of them than ever, on a potentially global scale." The consumers of this market are no longer locked into having to buy whatever the big music companies decide to push out, and are able to connect to many new artists who have their own musical style to listen to and gain inspiration.
Plagiarism is a big problem in the music community.
Many authors are having trouble dealing with their music being taken for another’s work. Sampling is the process of taking bits of another song and using it for your own. Maria Aragones, the author of Is Music Sampling Copyright Infringement?, explains that music sampling is the incorporation of outside, pre-recorded sections of music. As a writer for the IP Views, an online periodical hosted by Bengzon Negre Untalan, an intellectual property law office in Manila, Philippines, she states “Music sampling simply means incorporating pre-existing recordings into a new recording, whether part or all of a tune (a melody) and/or the lyrics. More often than not, sampling involves the incorporation of a short segment of a musical recording into a new musical recording.” So when an artist takes a part of another already produced song and incorporates it into their own new recording, it is called
sampling.
Sampling can result in copyright, no matter how small a piece of the music is. Aragones explains that an unwritten rule exists that says that a sample that isn’t more than 3 seconds is not actionable nor is it actively prosecuted, even though the smallest parts have been in lawsuits. She states in the article “To begin with, sources within and outside the music industry have said that in practice, a sample that does not exceed 3 seconds is either not actionable or is not actively prosecuted. This remains an unwritten rule, and is neither supported by law nor jurisprudence. The sampling of even the smallest segments of a musical recording, such as a tune, a three-note sequence, a guitar riff or part of the lyrics of a song, has long been the subject of lawsuits. Although most sampling cases often end up being settled out of court, jurisprudence is replete with discussions on the matter.” Basically, sampling, even the smallest bits of another song, can result in a copyright strike as it is usually viewed as musical plagiarism, as the sample is under the ownership of the artist who first recorded it. Sampling is becoming more and more common, and many authors are having their creativity taken down for it. The process of finding whether or not a music is infringing copyright is through looking at and listening to the music itself. Aragones explains the process through which a song is scanned for any samples placed in it in regards to the copyrighted piece in question. She states in her article, “The determination of whether substantial similarity exists specifically rests on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the sample in relation to the entire copyrighted work.” This means that artists whose music has parts very similar or identical to another’s work and it was obviously taken from an outside source, it can be viewed as copyright infringement. Music sampling, even when used in small amounts rather than substantial amounts, will be able to be classified as copyright.