The Era of Internet Piracy

The digital age has brought innumerable benefits to society throughout the past decade. Many new markets have been created, and routes for innovation have opened, but not all industries have flourished as a result of this era. Music piracy, which is the illegal act of obtaining or distributing sound recordings without the owner’s permission, is theorized to be the ultimate downfall of the music industry. CD sales have plummeted and caused the music moguls to panic, but their worriedness might be narrow sighted. Through speculative research, it can be surmised that the act of piracy can positively influence a musician’s career, allow for new opportunities and niches in the market, and have little side effects to anyone else in the business.

The widespread problem of music piracy implies that the solution to stopping it will be

Online piracy doesn’t only necessarily harm the music industry but harms other industries that are available in an economy, such as the movie industry. For instance, in the years of 2009 and 2010, a research study showed an estimate of 12,600 jobs and $1.8 billion were lost throughout the entire Canadian economy due to the piracy of movies let alone piracy of other content (source). The physical recorded music worldwide was exceling in the 1990’s, having profits as high as $37 billion in 1999 however that number significantly drops to $25 billion by 2007. Several organizations agreed that the drastic decrease in revenue not solely in Canada but worldwide, is due to online piracy. It has caused songwriters lose their jobs and staying without works and is demotivating new artists into the industry since it is a much harder process now to get signed into the business now. Furthermore, the technological change that keep occurring has reduced how effective the degree of protection that copyright laws have ever since

In today’s society, internet plays a pivotal role, influencing individuals in all classes, of all ages, and in various financial backgrounds. Because the Net dominates a large portion of the population’s time, many people have become accustomed to its current policies and ease of access to different types of media. So when consumers were threatened with the possibility of change, an enthusiastic reaction occurred worldwide. Internet users today are acclimated to downloading or torrenting music, games, and movies that would normally have a fee, for free, infringing the media’s copyrights in the process. Due to the rapid growth in this illicit activity, legislations such as SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA have been proposed; however they have been met

Many citizens are unaware that downloading music although free is illegal and others may think of piracy as a victimless. Individual artists, ranging from celebrity musical acts like Metallica to the stay-at-home mothers who sell digital scrapbooking kits in their free time, frequently speak out against piracy when talking to their fans. Grassroots organizations also work to educate the public about music property rights through online marketing campaigns. Technology has given the Music companies a fighting chance in preventing music piracy. Software programs can be created to require authorization codes or online registration forms that make piracy more difficult because they are only given with legal copies. For downloadable content, digital rights management systems limit the number of devices that can play a particular movie or song in order to stop people from sharing unauthorized copies. Unfortunately, there are still resourceful hackers and people in the piracy industry that still continue to find ways to get around these measures. Lawsuits may seem like an obvious way to stop piracy, but legal action is typically a last resort with the widespread use of the Internet, it is way too time consuming and expensive to track down every web site and person that is involved in the production and sharing of illegal music files. Piracy laws also vary from country to country, making enforcement rather

Piracy, in music industry, is a huge problem that gets worse instead of getting better. According to The Guardian newspaper, 90% people between 14-25 years old, make music copy. Most of these copies are made in MP3 for personal music collections. The growing average was 300% in the last two year, in comparation to 150% of growing in two years previus. All of this, shows piracy is unstoppable.

The music recording industry is in trouble. For several years now, sales of new and popular music have steadily declined and show no sign of changing. The record companies are quick to blame the growing popularity of the Internet; music is being traded in a digital form online, often anonymously, with the use of file-sharing programs such as Morpheus, KaZaA, and Imesh, to name a few. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) succeeded in disbanding the pioneer Internet file-sharing program, Napster, but is facing confrontation with similar programs that are escaping American copyright laws. While there is an obvious connection between declining popular music sales and increasing file sharing, there is more going on than the

In the recent year, illegal downloads have been dominating the music industry not only in the UK but worldwide. In 2015, numbers showed that a massive 62% of people in the UK either illegally download or steam music online, this affect artist’s income when it comes to illegally downloading music as when they see how much money they have made it will be plummeting each month. Throughout the UK many people were surveyed and results showed that, 26% of the people surveyed downloaded music illegally online. In the USA, The Recording Industry Association of America (also known as RIAA) reported that music sales have dropped massive 42% ever since illegal download was invented. This can affect the music industry in many ways some may be that if illegal downloads keep rising it will make sales lower and potentially make it harder for artists getting worldwide recognition and will make it harder for new upcoming artist to get signed by record labels. Spotify, the world largest streaming service, could be affected by people illegally downloading music as Spotify will end up losing money which will be used to pay artist royalties but won’t be able

In response to this “epidemic of illegal file sharing” (RIAA 2003a), on June 26, 2003, RIAA redirected legal threats toward individual subscribers of these networks who, in the past, enjoyed anonymity in P2P environments. Prior to RIAA’s recent legal efforts, individual file sharers were almost completely immune from legal liability when violating copyright law. These recent legal developments have considerably altered that perceived notion (Graham 2003; Lichtman 2003). Owing to the impracticality of filing lawsuits against every individual file sharer, RIAA has chosen to focus on a relatively small group of individuals and maximize the publicity surrounding its legal action to discourage the overall participation in file‐sharing networks.

However, music piracy also brings benefits to the music industry. At first, it is a way access to get the departed music that is no longer to republish. As a result of the way of constructing contracts, the music–record labels are not holden by artists themselves that their new label is not allowed to produce as the old one, and if the old label decides not to republish anymore or release the songs, the music is generally dead. Music downloading is the only way for most people to get these “dead” songs. In the second place, pirating music

In February of 2001, the once small college based program now had over 30 million users downloading and sharing music. Even after being shut down in 2003, file sharing still lives on. In a survey done by Digital Media, about 70% of people with the internet have once downloaded music illegally. But is it really hurting the industry as much as people say it is? The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America, an organization that deals with music sales) sure thinks so. They say that the recording industry loses 300 plus million to pirated music each year and that it is “a very real threat to the livelihoods of not only artists and record label employees but also thousands of less celebrated people in the music industry.” They believe it has caused so much devastation in the industry that they have no choice but to prosecute file sharers and bring them to court. Harvard University and the University of North Carolina beg to differ, they say that for every 5,000 downloads, one physical CD is lost and though it does hurt the industry, they consider illegal downloading a “small contribution to the overall slide in album sales” and also states that with the percent of music lost to pirated downloads, the percent of legal downloads has grown – which shows a possible positive effect to illegal downloading.

Until the 1980s, it was difficult to copy creative works. Books were only printed and bound on paper, and music was stored on vinyl records. With the introduction of the digital age and the use of binary code to transmit information, it has suddenly become much easier to infringe on copyright laws (Ford, Adam, and C. Ames Cushman). For example, the website “Napster” was founded in 1999 as a music downloading website that expanded until it had 38 million users. Unfortunately, the website was not paying for the numerous copies of music it was allowing its users to download, so the Recording Industry Association of America sued Napster for $100,000 for each song and won. Napster was officially bankrupt and shut down by 2002, allowing the music industry to recover and make a deal with a fair, legal website known as iTunes (Choate 275). Although the obvious reasons for not participating in piracy or copyright infringements are that laws state that these acts are illegal, there are additional reasons. In a world where information is increasingly available online, intellectual property must be protected by restricting piracy and illegal copying in order to ensure the livelihoods of content creators, encourage creative thinking, and preserve the United State’s national security and technological prowess.

Each day an estimated 400,000 films exchange hands through the Internet. Movie piracy, once reserved to pirate syndicates and illegal duplication factories, has become a common staple among college students with high-speed internet access. With advanced compression technology, movie files can be transferred across continents in hours and across campus networks in under ten minutes. File-sharing is seen as a victimless crime, but the motion picture industry is expected to lose $3.5 billion this year alone due to piracy. Pirate activities undermine every aspect of the legitimate filmmaking business since legitimate retailers cannot possibly compete fairly with pirate business.

With an increasingly high number of new technology being invented and innovated so often the issues pertaining to digital piracy are a relatively new phenomenon. Digital piracy is defined as unauthorized copying of digital software, videos, documents, and audio without permission from or compensation to the owner of the copyright (Wolfe & Higgins, 2009). While piracy is against the law, it is something many people will commit without knowing or without an understanding of what they are really doing.

From the moment consumers were able to use the internet to get music, software, and movies, piracy has had serious financial implications on the motion picture industry. Copyright protection presents some difficulty in illegally obtaining movies but there are many avenues around most of these systems. The RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, has tried several legal ploys to prevent people from accessing this material but many consumers continue to access it with little concern. Much like the music industry, which was challenged to reinvent its distribution model, the movie industry has to do the same thing. To counter the amount of piracy the movie studios must develop new systems for content delivery including streaming new release movies at home.