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The Music And Motion Picture Industry

Decent Essays

Kanye West, a famous hip-hop artist, stated in the latest episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” that “the internet destroyed the music industry” (2015). What did he mean by this? He meant that since the boom of technology and the immergence of the Internet, it is easy for someone to place a file on the internet and share it worldwide. File sharing, in and of itself, is not illegal. The problem or the legality of file sharing comes to play when you share or receive a file that you did not pay for yourself. The copyright laws state that it is unlawful to download or share copyrighted works such as music or movies without the expressly written consent or authorization of the copyright owner. The music and motion picture industry have taken an aggressive approach in efforts to stop illegal file sharing and piracy. When I think of files sharing, the first couple of services that comes to mind are Napster and Pirate Bay.

“This system, what’s most interesting about it is, you’re interacting with peers, you’re exchanging information with a person down the street.”—Shawn Fanning, Napster co-founder

Back in 1999, a college student by the name of Shawn Fanning created a college “project” called Napster. Napster was a file-sharing service that many people utilized to get their music. Before Napster, the only way to share a file was to email it to a recipient, or to burn it to a disk or thumb drive and physically give it to someone. Napster only survived a few years

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