Online Piracy: Threat to the Entertainment and Software Business

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

Unlicensed software use continued to be a major problem in 2013. Indeed, 43 percent of the software installed on PCs around the world was not properly licensed, an uptick from 42 percent in 2011. The commercial value of the unlicensed installations was $62.7 billion. (The Compliance Gap, 2014). As we can see piracy of software and other digital media is a global problem that adversely affects many businesses and the welfare of employees and consumers.

When I was in middle school, the biggest way to get music for free was a website named Limewire. Nothing was more exciting than to be able to hear a song on the radio then go home and download it to our desktops. Also cool, was the fact that if one of us didn’t have a song, our friend could simply “burn” it onto a c.d. for us. That was the only way we knew how to get music, aside from going out and buying the whole album. Apple’s iTunes was just starting out and iPods were just being created. Limewire was the way to go. Little did we know that Limewire was illegal and costing singers, songwriters, labels, and everyone associated with just one song, huge amounts of money.

It can be argued that the music industry has expanded into countless genres, artists and record labels over the years since 2000 to become bigger than it has ever been. So where have all the sales gone? It’s more than evident that file sharing has become much more attractive to music fans than it once was. People haven’t lost their interest in music, but have instead found new ways of obtaining it. These File sharing software such as Azuerus give the everyday computer the ability to obtain any files it’s user would like with a good internet connection and a couple clicks of a mouse. In short, people no longer need to pay for any music that they would like to own.

In the article “Internet Piracy Harms Artists”, Phil Gardson explains how internet piracy such as online music sharing and other forms of copyrighting music hurts hardworking singers and songwriters. He also asserts that it is imperative that Congress should in act a law against these types of crimes to help protect artists.

When people buy music, they get legal rights to that purchase, known as Intellectual Property (IP). But some people do not like to buy music. Whether they know it or not, they use piracy as their way to get music. They use softwares, look music up on the internet, or find somebody selling it. Piracy can be destructive to people or organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). People

Music piracy has been detrimental to the music industry and I believe it will only get worse with time. Music has become much easier for people to steal off the internet without paying the artist a dime. Technology continues to improve exponentially every year, because of these improvements in technology piracy has become much more accessible to music pirates. Overall album sales have gone down from 500 million units sold in 2007 to 200 million units sold in 2016. If this trend continues it will eliminate some of the smaller artists who depend on album sales to pay for studio time and other expenses. These lesser known artists also usually lack the funds to try to prosecute these music pirates and get their music off of the sites they are being

“Back when I was a teenager, we would have to buy an entire album just to have one song,” Brittni’s father explained, to her utter disbelief. Brittni shook her head, thinking of the thousands of songs in her iTunes library, and she wondered how people could afford to buy dozens of albums just for a handful of favorite singles. Buying music over the internet may seem commonplace today, but in the 1990’s, audio on the internet was merely experimental. In 2000, computer programmer Shawn Fanning introduced an internet site called Napster that irrevocably changed the internet, the music industry, and the complex relationship between the two.

The question then became “Just because we can get the music we want without paying for it, should we?” (Tyson, 2000, p.1). This issue of illegal downloads, which is also referred to as piracy, has been a hot topic ever since the introduction of Napster. According to Recording Industry Association of America “In the decade since peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have dropped 47 percent, from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion” (RIAA, 2014).

Since the iTunes music store was introduced on April 28, 2003, gross music sales have plummeted in the United States - from $11.8 billion in 2003 to $7.1 billion in 2012, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (Covert). Counterintuitively, during that time consumers were buying more music than ever. How is that possible? It 's because iTunes had made digital singles popular and was selling them cheap. This would change the music industry forever. In 2000, Americans bought 943 million CD albums (Covert), and digital sales didn’t even make a dent in comparison. But by 2007, those inexpensive singles overtook CDs by a wide margin, generating 819 million sales compared to just 500 million for the CD.

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

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.

“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.

When speaking economically, the digital music sector of the international music industry is undoubtably the most important sector in the industry. Within the last decade, music has seen cardinal changes in the way both major and independent labels distribute their products. An industry that once relied on Payola 's and mass distribution of physical records and CD 's now relies heavily on the power of the internet. The first instance of mass distribution of music through the internet was by the service Ritmoteca.com in 1998 [1]. Ritmoteca had a library of over 300,000 songs, offering individual songs for 99 cents each and albums for $9.99. After signing distribution deals with many major music labels such as Warner

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