Music Piracy

Okay, so here is my paper 🙂 We haven’t got our grades back for them yet and I’m super nervous.

I didn’t include sources because I didn’t think anyone would want to see them. lol

I don’t know why it breaks after the third paragraph, just how it pasted.

Enjoy! (if you can haha)

           In today’s age, it is becoming easier and easier to get instant access to the music people want. All one has to do is search for the song on Google, find a reputable site, and download the file to their computer, which occurs in a matter of minutes – all free of charge. There is one major downside, however; this is illegal, and many unfortunate people have been sent to court and forced to pay ludicrous fines – one woman was charged with $1.92 million dollars worth of damages for downloading only twenty four songs (Vijayan). Recording companies feel like they are being cheated out of CD sales, and consumers feel like they are being overcharged for music. Though recording companies may lose some sales from this, peer to peer file sharing of music files should not be illegal and should be available to consumers without risk of escalated fines.
         Copying music is not a new concept. With the invention of the cassette tape, people began to copy music from one cassette tape to another. Unfortunately for them, the quality of the song was compromised with each copy that was made, as technology was not nearly as advanced as it is today. When CD’s came along in the early 1980’s, it was not possible to burn them to a computer – yet. Over time, the ability to burn CD’s was available, and file sharing began to rise quickly (Wicknick).
          In 1999, peer to peer file sharing site Napster was launched, and became one of the most popular file sharing sites of the new millennium. In February of 2001 alone, over 2.79 billion files were shared over the site. This popularity also garnered the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America, more prevalently known as the RIAA, who launched a multitude of lawsuits against the site. Napster fell in court, and was forced to shut down. This, however, did not stop other file sharing sites from popping up, and the popularity of peer to peer file sharing sites continued to flourish (Riedel).  

   The RIAA is the main supporter of the music industry. Its members are hundreds upon hundreds of record labels, and the group represents over eighty five percent of all music on the United States market. They maintain a fierce, wooden-headed stance on the matter, saying that the impact of the millions of songs shared is “devastating.” According to their website, since Napster arose, peer to peer file sharing has caused a forty seven percent decrease in their sales. They also say that only thirty seven percent of music purchased in the United States in 2009 was paid for, and thirty billion songs were shared on file sharing sites in a period of just seven years. However, they also say that their digital media revenues have jumped by a thousand percent – pretty good, one might think, considering so many consumers are “stealing” music (“RIAA – For Students…”).
   The RIAA went on a lawsuit rampage that lasted several years. Most of the people targeted chose to settle outside court for a much smaller cost (Kravets; “Copyright Lawsuits…”). Two defendants, however, decided to go in front of a jury against the RIAA; unfortunately, both defendants lost, and both with huge price tags. In the case of RIAA vs. Tenenbaum, the jury awarded the RIAA $22,500 in damages per song. Multiply that by thirty songs, and that amounts to $675,000 in damages. Tenenbaum’s lawyers claimed that this amount for such few songs is “excessive,” especially with so many others file sharing so many songs daily (Kravets; “$675,000…”). Another, much more shocking case was RIAA vs. Thomas-Rasset, where the RIAA was awarded a whopping $1.92 million dollars for just twenty four songs (Kravets; “Last-Ditch Effort…”).
Many people question the RIAA for their decision to sue so many people. To many, their attempts seemed unsuccessful; in legal fees, it cost the RIAA over $64 million dollars to win back only $1.4 million (Masnick). Near the end of 2008, the RIAA finally got smart and decided to stop pursuing individuals and attack the places which file sharing is occurring (Kravets; “Copyright Lawsuits…”). A recent example of this is the shut down of the extremely popular peer to peer file sharing software called LimeWire. The RIAA went after the site, as it is reported that there were fifty million users of the software per month. Judge Kimba Wood ruled in the RIAA’s favor, saying that most of the site’s use was for copyright infringement (Kravets; “LimeWire Crushed…”). The RIAA later sued LimeWire for $75 trillion dollars, which the same judge said was “absurd” and ruled against them (Purewal). The RIAA has also decided to start targeting major Internet providers. They want these providers to start monitoring the file sharing habits of their customers and, if the customer is caught illegally file sharing, send them a warning that if they continue, their service will be throttled – slowed down – or cut off entirely (“RIAA Drops Lawsuits…”).
   A study conducted by two researchers has shown that music piracy does not have the drastic effect on sales that the music industry claims it does. The two researchers, Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina, followed 680 albums from a wide variety of musical genres and calculated the illegal downloads in comparison to the sales rates. The data showed that the albums that were selling the best were also the most heavily downloaded. Only the music that was downloaded the least showed any sort of decline in sales. In total, the researchers followed 1.75 million downloads. They conclude in their study that the likely cause of falling sales is due to the current state of our economy (Knight).
    They are not the only ones who feel this way. Peer to peer file sharing support site Torrent Freak posted an article that showed that the RIAA was manipulating their statistics. While it was true that whole album sales had gone down by forty two percent, singles sales had went up by a landslide – 669 percent. Torrent Freak also presents a detailed chart which shows that, though physical CD sales have gone down, downloaded singles sales have gone up by a mile and downloaded albums have slightly increased, as well as music purchases on mobile devices. However, downloaded music does not sell for as much as a physical CD, which means that the music industry doesn’t make as much money. Torrent Freak believes that the cause of the decline in sales is due to the format shift from CD’s to digital downloads. They reached this conclusion by comparing the music sales in the United States to those in Germany. In Germany, physical CD sales are still widely popular, unlike here in the United States where most of the sales are in downloaded music. The German music industry has only seen a five percent decline in sales between 2004 and 2008, while during the same time the United States has seen a thirty percent decline. They spoke with the RIAA and they issued a statement that they understood that piracy was not the only reason for the decline in music sales, but that it is the “primary reason” (“Is Piracy Really…”). Even a report from the US Government Accountability Office determined that whether piracy and declining sales were linked was inconclusive (Grossman 59). 
An article from The Inquirer also picks out some of the inconsistencies of the RIAA’s arguments. They mentioned a press release by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, which states that the world music sales fell by eight percent in 2002, and accused music pirates of this, even though they themselves mentioned that they were having to compete with video game and DVD sales. The article also said that though the RIAA reported that major labels were losing sales, independent labels were seeing an increase in their sales. The article accuses organizations such as the RIAA and the IFPI of going against their consumers wants for their own personal gains, using “half-truths and distortions” to get their point across. They even accused these organizations of going as far as to tell “outright lies” (“RIAA Piracy Arguments…”)
    It is easy to see how music artists can actually benefit from music piracy. Two studies show that the only artists who do not benefit from piracy are the most popular. The rest – seventy five percent of artists – benefit from peer to peer file sharing. With file sharing, lesser-known artists are much easier to find, and many people will go on to purchase their music if they enjoy the artist’s music. Because the Internet is such a vast portal of information, people don’t have to rely on the music industry to find new artists; all they have to do is complete a quick search of a particular genre or surf a certain music site, such as last.fm or Pandora, and they have access to artists they never would have heard of without the Internet (“Why Most Artists Profit…”).
    Many artists in the industry support piracy for these benefits. European pop singer Robbie Williams says that he thinks music piracy is “great.” The artist asked several of the people at his record label about what they though of piracy and he said they “don’t know what to do about it” (“Music Piracy ‘great’…”). Another group, Sneaky Sound System, says that piracy helps support them. According to their songwriter Angus McDonald, most of their revenue comes from playing live shows (“Music Piracy Not so Bad…”). Indie band Them Clones encourage their fans to freely share their music with their friends and elsewhere – they even have the words “Don’t Forget to Pirate this CD” written on the CD. Not only that, but if they copy a CD, they will get a code which will enable them to download an unreleased song by the band. Radiohead, a British rock group, released one of their albums on their website for their fans to buy at whatever price they chose – even free, if they liked. Even though three-fifths of the downloads were for free, the band still made more sales on that album than on their previous release (Jhaveri). Musician Janis Ian says that she gets roughly one hundred hits on her website a month, mostly from people who downloaded a couple of her hit songs for free from file sharing sites. She said that of those one hundred, fifteen people purchased CD’s from her site; she also said this did not include the people who purchased her CD in stores or on other sites (Ian 256). Ian also says that she makes most of her revenue from live shows and often received “royalties“ that showed that she owed her label money rather than the other way around (259). 
Many people disagree with peer to peer file sharing. Some feel as though it is considered stealing; however, those who support file sharing feel that they are only making a copy of the file, therefore, that is not stealing. Some will also go against it because it is breaking the law. While this is true, there are many laws that have been broken in protest due to the fact that people felt they were wrong.  There are those who disagree with piracy because they feel it is wrong that the artists and record companies do not get revenue. As stated earlier, artists don’t receive very much revenue at all from album sales and, if file sharing were to become legal, it is likely that major labels would become obsolete.
  The music industry, though they have attempted to, is failing to catch up to today’s world of digital media. It is all too simple for one to rationalize illegally downloading a song when they know the artist won’t get much revenue from it, anyway. Artists benefit from it because free downloads mean that their music is more likely to be shared and enjoyed. Though it is true that labels work hard to promote their artists, this is now unnecessary as peer to peer file sharing would do, and continues to do, most of their work for them. File sharing should be widely supported. The sooner record companies realize that they are helpless to stop the changes in the music industry, the better off they will be.