Music Piracy

Music Piracy In the 21st century, many changes have been made to digital media. One such media that has experienced an extreme change is music. It is no longer just a type of media that is made by singers and bought by consumers, but it is now part of the “dark, scary” side of the Internet. There are even journal article authors who have written about music piracy. “Music is the most widely pirated media in the world today. From singles to albums to recording demos, music of all genres is ripped and released into the music piracy scene” (Craig, Honick, and Burnett 174). These authors illustrate how big music piracy has become. Currently, in the world of music industries, music piracy is taking over the “money business” and leaving musicians financially unstable; this instability is the reason for convincing music pirates to stop downloading music, illegally, off the Internet by coming up with different solutions to the issue of piracy. The solutions consist of finding other websites where music downloading can be done at a reasonable price, taking legal action if necessary, and coming up with hi-tech development that could stop pirates from downloading.
People may be wondering what exactly music pirates are defined as. According to Amy Witherbee, they are normal, everyday people who download music illegally off the Internet (2). Music piracy has been occurring for a long time, as long as the 1700’s where “music was conventionally regarded as lying beyond the purview of copyright altogether, so publishers sold unauthorized reprints freely” (Johns 67). Later, though, big companies started to form in the world. Shawn Fanning, a college student, created the Napster Company online, and once it was established, everyone started to use Napster in college and it spread around quickly becoming the new website to use and download music from (Wade 10). Anyone can do the downloading through Napster and many people participate. Also, music piracy is definitely not an untouched topic. There have been law cases against certain Internet companies that allow music sharing to occur. For example, Matt Richtel discusses in the New York Times article that the company Fanning started (Napster) was part of a court case against The Recording Industry Association of America. The court had ordered the industry and company to get along by allowing Napster to copyright certain music that the recording industry approved and, of course, for a price. Napster failed to have the music approved and only caused the court case to become bigger. Finally, the judge ordered Napster to stop swapping copyrighted music that the recording company owned. Even though all of these controversies occurred, Napster and music piracy, in general, still believe they are doing no harm to the music industry and that they are actually benefiting the sales and profits. In an article titled Securities Price Effects of Napster-Related Events, there is a phrase that reads “the evidence indicates that events that threatened Napster’s survival resulted in decreases in the stock prices of the music firms” (Navissi 167). Even though Napster believed they were beneficial, it turns out they brought nothing but harm to the stock market. It was actually beneficial that Napster was shut down. The court case is just one of the many issues Napster has been through. It was a part of eleven court cases and, finally, Napster was told to discontinue its company online (Navissi 167). Other companies are still up and running, though, and there is not going to be a stop to piracy just because one company has been shut down. It will keep on occurring until a stop is put to the companies.
As the years have been going by, music sharing and downloading has been increasing and less people seem to care about it now. There were once many news articles and online articles that discussed music piracy during the early 2000’s, but it has seemed to die down now. There has not been much talk on the issue. One reason why less people care about the music piracy issue is because the recording industries, themselves, have stopped trying to ban the illegal downloading. Also, there are a multitude of people that do this downloading; therefore, it is just difficult to stop every single person from downloading music online. Since the people of the music industries and the pirates have stopped caring, other actions will have to be taken. In order to stop piracy from continuing, music pirates must completely stop the illegal downloading or “technological protection strategies” (Chui, Hung-Chang et. al 723) must be taken on. As mentioned before, legal actions have been taken to stop the illegal purchasing, but the legal actions were only successful up to a certain point. Certain technological advances could help, though, in stopping piracy. These advances consist of watermarks on CD’s (Craig 175), blocking music piracy sites, and putting music into secure areas of the Internet to where one can only access the music with a small fee. All of these strategies seem relevant enough to work, but no one will ever know unless they are put into action. Music piracy has become the next big issue and measures must be put down to stop it.
Music pirates have yet to realize the real dangers behind this illegal downloading. The people do not realize that music artists are being affected, financially, by their downloading and music industries are losing billions of dollars with a decrease in CD sales. When music industries first started to grow, there were only one to two companies that were part of the industry. Now, the industry as a whole is composed of five major companies that make over “14 billion yearly” (Boorstin 10). These companies make good money, and the start of downloading and sharing has only ruined it. According to Alejandro Zentner, there is about 9 percent of the total population that download music every day. Also, the regular users that download the music also share the music to people who do not download as much. Because of this downloading and sharing, there has been a drop in music sales by 2.7 percent making music industries lose billions. When it comes to music artists, they already have a hard time making money through recording companies and music pirates do not make it easier. The statistics say that “The costs of recording an album can easily reach several hundred thousand dollars, so an artist can only expect to earn royalties from an album if it sells over 500,000 copies” (Boorstin 11). People may believe that artists are financially successful, but, in reality, they make barely any money. According to Janis Ian, a famous music artist, “’if we’re not songwriters, and not hugely successful commercially (as in platinum plus), we [recording artists] don’t make a dime off our recordings’” (qtd. in Boorstin 12). Imagine how much recording artists would make if piracy took over completely. These artists would basically make zero money if they were not the least bit successful or had only been in the music business for a few years. Now, artists are taking their own stand and trying to stop piracy on their own. For example, these two Zimbabwean men that were making good money off of selling pirated music in Botswana finally have their house broken into by famous music artists and they ended up confiscating all the pirated music (Legodimo). Violence has even become a part of stopping piracy; therefore, music pirates do not know what may be coming to them.
Although there may be many other alternatives to piracy, some music pirates may not want to stop pirating at all. There are many opposing views in discontinuing music downloading or music file sharing. The views consist of music pirates not wanting to drive to a store to buy a CD; in other words, they would want to do something that is more convenient for them. Also, most music pirates do not want to pay for the music. According to Cultures of Music Piracy, “Making a single CD costs record companies well under $1 (Vogel, 2001: 162), students feel that CDs are overpriced, especially when it turns out there are only a couple of good songs on the album” (qtd. in Condry 20). Even though it may look cheap if a CD only costs one dollar for it to be made and put into stores, the price of the CD afterwards is high and what the consumers have to pay is that high price. If anything free is available at hand, they would rather take that than purchase it. Music pirates, also, just do not care that their downloading is affecting music artists. Music artists, famous celebrities who do not have much personal interaction with the common folk, are not very important to the pirates and, therefore, do not care to take their music illegally. All of these opposing views seem reasonable on why music pirates do not want to purchase the music. There are solutions to all of these views, though. For example, when it comes to music pirates wanting convenience in obtaining their music, they can easily purchase music at home on the Internet. There is absolutely no need for anyone to leave his or her own home and go to a store to buy a CD. Money is also a very big issue in buying music, but that issue can be reasonable solved, too. There are many other websites that have packages put together for purchasing a certain amount of music. Rhapsody, a legal downloading music website, has a 14 day trial for anyone who is interested in signing up with them and, after the sign-up, it is either just one dollar per track or $12.99 per month for unlimited downloading (www.rhapsody.com). That deal is a very reasonable price and the website has broken down the payments in a way that is convenient for anyone. There are also many other websites out there who are willing to help anyone that needs financial assistance with his or her music purchases. For example, LimeWire is also another online company that allows anyone to become a member of his or her website and purchase music. Usually there are free membership trials if no one wants to obtain the full program. Since this option is available, people save money by not becoming a full member of the program, but they would still have to purchase the music. It is a total of $34.95 to acquire the full program of LimeWire (beta.limewire.com). That price is a lot of money that can be saved if one just signs up for the free membership. Also, there has even been a start to a certain number of students who used to be pirates and now have taken measures to stop piracy. According to Elise Ackerman in her article titled “Student Gets around Program to Prevent Music Piracy”, a Princeton University graduate named John Halderman actually installed a device into a certain CD he owned that can stop anyone from copying that CD. He has even started to install this device into computers. Even though the software has loopholes to it, the software was still made and put into certain computers to where no one can copy music from his or her CDs. Since this student came up with a way to prevent piracy, anyone has the capability to stop pirating and becoming like this man who tried stopped piracy. Even though music pirates can conveniently purchase music at home (even purchase it at a reasonable price) or even come up with software to prevent piracy, some music pirates could actually just not care at all about how their downloading is affecting the careers of musicians. Music pirates do not realize, though, that if they keep on pirating, soon enough music artists will be out of the job and there will be no more music made for the pirates to download illegally. Music pirates will have no more music to listen to and there will be no more artists in the industry. Several music artists that have been close to experiencing this scenario are all over programs online such as LimeWire, Napster, Rhapsody, and etc. Anyone that may seem to be doing well in the music industry such as Taylor Swift, Jessie McCartney, and Akon all end up on these piracy sites and they are gradually losing money every second one of their singles are being downloaded (Zentner 64). Soon enough all these famous artists will have no more money to produce more music and the music industry will come crashing down. There are no benefits in either of the situations where music pirates are stubborn in stopping piracy and, at the same time, music artists are losing money. It is better if the music pirates just stop pirating all together. Therefore, music artists do not go bankrupt and are available to make more music for the pleasure of listening. Everyone benefits if this solution comes true.
Now, what if music pirates still do not care that a certain number of artists lose their jobs since there are many artists in the industry? What are music pirates going to do if all the music artists make their music only accessible to ITunes or Zunes? There is no way one can obtain music for free if all the music is put into these types of services. Therefore, again, it is for the best if piracy is put a stop to otherwise, one day, all the music made by all the music artists will be only a part of services like ITunes and then there will be no music by music artists available for pirates to listen to. Only way they can is if they start buying music. Music piracy has many ways of being stopped and music pirates would be able to see this now.
Music piracy, a big issue among the entire world, has been ruining music industries for decades, now, and leaving most music artists with no money. These results are the very reason on why music piracy needs to be put a stop to either by legal action, technological software, or by the music pirates themselves. Piracy has become a big issue and certain actions have been taken to stop pirates from continuing their downloading, but these certain actions have not seemed to have worked at all. Music pirates, however, have been given a sufficient amount of reasons on why piracy needs to be put to a stop to, and if these reasons stop the whole piracy issue, there will be a world filled with no piracy and music artists will be financially stable again. If music artists become financially stable, the music industry as a whole will no longer lose money and be at the top of the music business once again. In an ideal world, music artists would seem to love the fact that there is no piracy and their music is only obtained through purchasing. This scenario can come true if music pirates stop pirating and realize actually how bad it is affecting music artists.

Works Cited
Ackerman, Elise. "Student Gets Around Program to Prevent Music Piracy." San Jose Mercury News 8 Oct. 2003. 21 July 2012 <http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.etsu.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=2W62398725798&site=pov-live>.
Chui, Hung-Chang et. al. "How to Discourage Online Music Piracy (Author abstract)." International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development 5.6 (Nov 9, 2008): 723. Academic OneFile. Gale. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July 2012
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Craig, Paul, Ron Honick, and Mark Burnett. Software Piracy Exposed. Rockland: Syngress, 2005. NetLibrary. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July 2012.
Johns, Adrian. "Pop Music Pirate Hunters." Daedalus 131.2 (Spring 2002): 67-78. General OneFile. Gale. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July 2012. Legodimo , Chippa . "Local Artistes Act Against Music Piracy." Africa News Service 23 Nov. 2007. 15 July 2012 <http://infotrac.galegroup.com.etsu.edu>.
Music, Downloads, Music Videos, Lyrics and Photos - Rhapsody. 2001. AMG. 16 July 2012. <http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html>.
Official Website & Free Download - Lime Wire. 2000. Lime Wire LLC. 16 July 2012.
<http://beta.limewire.com/>.
Richtel, Matt. "Music Industry and Napster Still at Odds." New York Times 21 Mar. 2001, sec. C: 1-2. The New York Times. 16 July 2012 <http://query.nytimes.com>.
Wade, Jared. "The Music Industry 's War on Piracy." Risk Management 51.2 (Feb 2004): 10-6. Academic OneFile. Gale. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July. 2012.
Witherbee, Amy. "Point: Modern Day Pirates." Points of View: Music Downloading (Feb. 2007): 2. Points of View Reference Center. EBSCO. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July. 2012.
Zentner, Alejandro. "Measuring the Effect of File Sharing on Music Purchases." Journal of Law and Economics 49.1 (April 2006): 63-90. Academic OneFile. Gale. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July. 2012.

Cited: Ackerman, Elise. "Student Gets Around Program to Prevent Music Piracy." San Jose Mercury News 8 Oct. 2003. 21 July 2012 &lt;http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.etsu.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&amp;db=pwh&amp;AN=2W62398725798&amp;site=pov-live&gt;. Craig, Paul, Ron Honick, and Mark Burnett. Software Piracy Exposed. Rockland: Syngress, 2005. NetLibrary. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July 2012. Johns, Adrian. "Pop Music Pirate Hunters." Daedalus 131.2 (Spring 2002): 67-78. General OneFile. Gale. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July 2012.  Legodimo , Chippa Music, Downloads, Music Videos, Lyrics and Photos - Rhapsody. 2001. AMG. 16 July 2012. &lt;http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html&gt;. Official Website &amp; Free Download - Lime Wire. 2000. Lime Wire LLC. 16 July 2012. Richtel, Matt. "Music Industry and Napster Still at Odds." New York Times 21 Mar. 2001, sec. C: 1-2. The New York Times. 16 July 2012 &lt;http://query.nytimes.com&gt;. Wade, Jared. "The Music Industry 's War on Piracy." Risk Management 51.2 (Feb 2004): 10-6. Academic OneFile. Gale. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July. 2012. Witherbee, Amy Zentner, Alejandro. "Measuring the Effect of File Sharing on Music Purchases." Journal of Law and Economics 49.1 (April 2006): 63-90. Academic OneFile. Gale. Tennessee Tech Library. 11 July. 2012.