The Corruption of Downloading Music

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

The parties finally reached a settlement of 105 million dollars distributed to the various companies respectively. While the record companies asked for the maximum penalty of 1.4 billion dollars, they hoped that the huge victory would show other piracy sites and services that what they’re doing is not a game. Illegal downloads hurt the people who have put in the hard work, day in and day out. The RIAA’s chairman, Mitch Bainwol said it best, “As the court heard during the last two weeks, Limewire wreaked enormous damage on the music community, helping contribute to thousands of lost jobs and few opportunities for aspiring artists.”

In 2018 a mother of a 12-year-old girl in New York settled a lawsuit of $2000 because she was illegally sharing copyrighted music files according to www.pediatrics.about.com. Why would someone want to do that? As the person, you’re taking the money of someone else’s hard work. The artist that wrote the song took a lot of time and effort to make it. There are thousands of music artist and stealing their money is not fair for all they do. To stop this from occurring there must be harsher penalties or else artist will not have money to exist anymore or employees or money in return.

In conclusion, Online Piracy should be prosecuted because it can cause damage to personal property, it steals profits from musicians, and it's an illegal federal crime. It doesn't take much to know stealing is a crime and should be treated as so in a fair manner no matter what form it comes

Although the action of retrieving music illegally can be easily accessed as group three states, “majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals...would not have been purchased if illegal websites were not available to them” it provides a weak point because either way people see it music is available to them with purchase and if that is the only option than that process will occur. The society that illegally downloaded music created can be seen in one huge source known as, “Napster” in an article, by Stephen Seigel he states, “ Napster allows its users to "share" songs with other users, completely bypassing the traditional forms of music distribution” (“Nipping at Napster”). Napster allows people to share all types of

It is believed that illegal downloading does not affect the music industry and that recording artists are rich, so there is nothing wrong with grabbing a

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

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

The issues that will be slugged out in federal district court in San Francisco sound a little too pop culture to be all that serious. How many music CDs are people buying these days in record stores throughout the nation because of Napster? Is the technology that Napster uses legal? Napster is, of course, the wildly popular file-sharing service whose 20 million users have downloaded some half a billion songs--most copyrighted for free. The technology that Napster has brought to music listeners across the globe has allowed the freedom of obtaining music for free and should not be shut down by the entertainment industry's argument in federal court.

I feel music piracy should be leaglized. Why? Because people are going to continue to download music for free wether its leagal or not. Music Piracy is one of the most frequently commited crimes in the world and happens everyday. However most people do not see music piracy as a crime. For most it is a way of life

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).

“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.

There are a number of different opinions on whether people think downloading music is legal or illegal. An Internet site, CBBC Newsround, asked for opinions on the subject. Lee, a fifteen-year-old from Newcastle, clearly shows that he sees nothing wrong with downloading music when he wrote, "I think that it doesn't matter if you download music from the net because the singles cost too much in the shops. If the prices where lowered to around $8-10 then CDs may not be downloaded as much. But nothing will stop people from downloading music files illegally; I think people downloading music are not wrong to download music at all"(CBBC).

Another big disadvantage of music piracy is its cost. “One credible study by the Institute for Policy Innovation hooks the annual harm at $12.5 billion dollars in losses to the U.S. economy as well as more than 70,000 lost jobs and $2 billion in lost wages to American workers.”(Siwek)On top of that, the music industry is wasting more money on pointless and ineffective advertisements and campaigns to raise awareness on music piracy. I strongly believe that the music industry needs to stop fighting music piracy and instead, accept it and find a way to work around this problem. The Internet is still expanding, making it extremely hard for the music industry to fight against a ‘crime’ that we really haven’t found a concrete solution to. The music industry needs to understand and accept that people have stopped thinking twice before illegally downloading music because it is too easy.

Now lets take a look at the legal issues involved with file sharing. In the recording industry, there are two copyright laws involved. The first one is the copyright of the musical composition, which deals with the lyrics and musical notes. This is usually owned by the songwriter or music publisher.4 The second law is the copyright in sound recording, which deals with the recording of the performer singing or playing a given song. This is usually owned by the record company.5 The law that is violated with electronic file sharing is the second one. Titles 17 and 18 of the U.S. Code protect copyright owners from the unauthorized reproduction, adaptation or distribution of sound recordings, as well as certain digital performances to the public.6 So, from the legal clauses, it can be interpreted that users of popular online sites such as Napster are engaging in unauthorized distribution of sound recordings. The online infringement of copyrighted music can be punished with several years in prison. 7