Music Piracy: the Epidemic of the century
... peer-to-peer networks. America is a free country, but there are limitations to that freedom such as stealing. When someone downloads copyrighted material without paying it’s considered stealing. The artists have the rights to all the songs they create, which means that they can sell them to who they wish for whatever price they choose. And unless someone has permission from the artist to download their material, it is illegal. When artists decide to start writing music, or start a band, they do it with the possibility to make money and support themselves by doing what they enjoy. If downloading music for free was legal, then no one would have to pay for music and artists wouldn’t be getting any money. When music artists are making no money to support themselves, then there is much less motivation to make music, leading to a decline in music in general. The source of most music piracy today comes from the file sharing programs such as Kazaa, Grokster, Imesh, WinMX, LimeWire, Bearshare, Aimster, and Morpheus. These are p2p (peer-to-peer) networks that allow users to transfer files to one another. Most of these files being copyrighted material that is illegal to take without paying for. The gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing networks today are different from Napster in a way that makes the actual program legal. The reason Napster was shut down was because of its central database that people shared files through. The p2p networks today don’t have central databases, and people transfer file directly from each other’s computers. So the music company cannot file a suit against the network because it is not the network that is providing the copyrighted material, it is the individual people. This makes it more difficult to punish file-sharers, making it easier to access free music. Different measures need to be taken to put a stop to these p2p gnutella networks. There are a number of different tactics that the record company can take to help slow down the trade such as spreading copies of fake music in these networks, or “spoofing”(Sorkin 1). They can also use software that sabotages the Internet connection of people who download copyrighted music. Methods to slow down the gnutella networks need to be put into action to help eventually shut them down. Some beginning music artists support free music sharing online because they say that it helps then become more popular. There are some artists that want to share their music for free, and there is nothing stopping them. Other artists just don’t want to be giving away their music and they have the right to not share it for free. The ones who do support it, can give permission to the file sharing networks to have their music on there. A combination of enforcing stricter laws and educating the public can help prevent a lot of the piracy going on today. One of the main reasons people keep downloading is because they know it’s very likely they won’t get caught. If people are scared enough, though, then they will stop doing it. The government needs to set an example by punishing the people who download and share their music online, which will help show people the seriousness of the crime. The problem is that people see everyone else downloading music for free so they figure its ok. The fact is that getting music online without paying is a serious crime that can result in serious consequences. If they see that people are getting in trouble for it they will eventually stop. Piracy should be treated like any other illegal activity. Illegal drugs, for instance, are highly enforced because it is seen as a major threat to our society. Piracy should be looked at in the same way because it is basically taking away the freedom of the music industry and the freedom of the artists. From a survey I conducted of 54 random high school students, 36 illegally download music and 18 do not. Of the 36 that do, 19 of them download 1-10 songs per week, 8 download 11-20 per week, 4 download 21-30 per week, and 5 download 40 or more per week. Out of the people who illegally download music, 16 consider it unethical but still do it. Of the people who don’t illegally download, half of them don’t consider it unethical, but are too afraid to do it. More than half of the students surveyed download illegal copyrighted material, and of the ones that do, more than half don’t consider it unethical. This shows how much of a problem piracy has become, and also how unaware people are of the effects caused by illegal downloading. A Pew survey in 2003 showed that “two-thirds of Internet users don’t care whether the music they download is copyrighted or not” (Greenblatt). When people do not consider it wrong, they won’t stop doing it. During the 1990’s, the music Industry grew rapidly with much success. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), album sales grew from 24.1 billion to 38.6 billion during the 1990’s (Zentner 2). In 19...