Increase of Illegal Downloading of Music

This report studies the impact piracy has on society and how it is developing with technology. It also highlights the positive and negative economic factors along with the ethical influences, which the law aspect of software piracy has also been integrated. This report helps to understand how the conflict with

“Before the days of YouTube and the Internet, a band 's chances of striking it big depended on record companies. If a band was lucky enough to get a record deal, it gained access to a label 's vast resources and connections. The company paid for the band 's studio time, … and got its music played on the radio, reaching millions of record buying Americans” (Majerol, 1). Now, anyone with talent can post a video of themselves and become an internet sensation, only to then receive a deal with a label to continue growing their career. The issue is, with the Internet came digital downloading, and with the growing popularity of digital downloading came illegal downloading, known as Digital Piracy, which has affected the music industry greatly. This issue affects everyone involved in the Music Industry. From the small CD store owner to the Artist on stage, everyone has and continues to be affected by the growing popularity of digital downloading services. Artists, producers, and songwriters lose an estimated 12.5 Billion USD every year to illegal digital music services. Further, the economic impact from [digital downloading] is an estimated loss of 2+ Billion USD (Storrs, 1). This money affects the “little guys” in the industry and the average worker within the industry.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 30 billion songs were illegally downloaded between 2004 and 2009. Even with sites like iTunes and Rhapsody offering legal downloads, peer-to-peer file sharing still exists. Illegally downloading music has had a significant impact on the music industry resulting in a loss of profits and jobs, and changing how music is delivered to the masses. (Adkins, n.d.) Showing that even having the ethically correct option P2P sharing of illegal media is still thriving. The RIAA reports that music sales in the United States have dropped

Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left

For many years illegal file sharing and music swapping has been going on. Two very popular cases are the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster case and the A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster case. Both cases differ in many ways however they also have similarities. A lot of music and other sorts of entertainment are being distributed for free all over the internet. What some people do not think of are the consequences that will be faced if they get caught. Not only is the distributor at risk for getting caught but those of us that download the software illegally can be charged.

The increase in piracy has led to more enforcement of the laws and higher penalties in breaking them

The rise of the Internet era opened the whole new market for traditional media full of opportunities as well as threats. Online piracy being one of them because the music and film industry loses £5.4bn in a year and if it was reduced by 10% it could have created up to 13 thousand jobs in the UK. There are various attempts taken to fight with online piracy; a case study of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be considered as well as other legislations attempting to regulate copyrights in the Internet. This

The problem of illegal downloading in the recording industry was a result of specific technological developments. It was the development of MP3 file formats for digital audio recordings, which first emerged in the early 1990s, but did not become a significant copyright threat to the recording industry

Though it doesn 't receive as much attention in terms of media attention and public discourse as it earlier in the 2000s, the issue of copyrighted music and its illegal consumption over the internet still continues to be a major issue. With the advent of the internet, digital music, and mp3 players, one of the drawbacks for many of those in the music industry was the subsequent increase in pirated music that occurred. As illegal torrent sites appeared, such as Napster and Limewire, people were discovering that they could now download for free what they once paid for. Of course, as a direct result, music companies and artists both saw a significant decrease in sales in terms of the physical medium, with CD sales beginning to show sharp declines. In fact, this had a carryover effects of also closing down many of the mom and pop record stores that existed, since they did not have the financial means to withstand a restructuring process. Major chain stores were also not immune to the decline sales, as some once-prominent stores, such as the Virgin Megastore and the Wall, had to close down. Once Apple Inc. released its iPod and created the iTunes Store, the music industry was finally beginning to adapt itself to the digital realm, as Apple began signing agreements with most of the major music labels to release their songs on a digital platform as well. With songs being available individually for just $0.99 cents and whole albums able to be purchased, people now had a legal

had touched on how people are making a hobby of illegally downloading music. I found an article by Amy Adkins titled How Does Illegally Downloading Music Impact the Music Industry. She touches on a few subjects of how illegally downloading music directly affects the music industry. She opens up the article stating that 30 billion songs were illegally downloaded between 2004 and 2009 which is a staggering statistic. Napster came out in 1999 and was a free file sharing website where people were getting music illegally. The music industry has loss $12.5 billion due to the availability of free music. Some people have been taken to court for being found downloading illegally. In her article Adkins reveals that due to the illegal downloading of music

Piracy is already illegal and punished with heavy fines and possible jail time. Yet piracy still accounts for 23.76% of the total internet bandwidth worldwide.("Safe Internet", 1) This percentage is growing and is costing product creators more and more. Meaning product creators are finding a hard time to make new products when their sales are

Music piracy is an infringement that involve the copying or selling of creative works that which the copyright owner, composer, or artist did not consent to. Before the invention of newer technology that allowed for the piracy process to become less difficult, music piracy was much easier to control. With this new and improved technology of the 21st century, users of the web began adding media files to the internet, which made all previous difficulties substantially less challenging. It was much easier for people with little to no knowledge of technology and old piracy methods to gather media files. Piracy may seem petty, but the effects are major. Not only is it illegal, when music is copied and or shared the value decreases with each download.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines piracy as “the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted or patented material.” It is a problem that affects companies all over the world. Piracy of software, movies, and music is commonplace in China. China has the second worst piracy rate in the world; about 92 percent of the software in China is pirated (Williams 2004). Various companies and governments have attempted to combat piracy, but they had not seen much success until recent years. Combating piracy is a difficult task, especially in a country that has a history of not enforcing intellectual property laws.

As the success of services like Hulu and Netflix suggests, consumers are only too happy to pay for content that 's made available in a convenient form, and at a reasonable price. If the content industries want a genuinely effective way to reduce global piracy, they should spend less time and money lobbying for new regulations, and focus on providing innovative services that make piracy unattractive. [5]

We all know that downloading pirated music and films is illegal, but what exactly is it? The term piracy refers to the copying and selling of music, films and other media illegally; in other words you are copying and selling copyrighted media without the permission of the original owner (NiDirect, n.d.). With the massive growth of the internet and its ability to store and capture vast amounts of data, we have become much more reliable on information systems in all aspects of life, but it does not come without the risk of information technology being used unethically. With the number of IT breakthroughs in recent years “the importance of ethics and human values has been underemphasised” often resulting in various consequences. Not surprisingly one of the many public concerns about the ethical use of IT is that “millions of people have downloaded music and movies at no charge and in apparent violation of copyright laws at tremendous expense to the owners of those copyrights” (Reynolds, Ethics in Information Technology, 2015). This essay covers the ethical issues of downloading pirated music and films and the impact it has on music corporations and recording and film companies.