Solution?

Everyone knows that internet piracy is wrong but yet millions of people do it every day. Why is that?  Could it be for the rush that people feel knowing that they are committing a crime or is it just that they can't afford to spend the money on songs or a cd because they have bills to pay? Perhaps it’s just a matter of convenience or maybe if it wasn’t free they wouldn’t purchase it?  

  The music industry is still a billion dollar industry and is still breaking records with sales. Adele sold over 8 million albums and this is the legal count! Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga sold over 1 million albums in the first week of release. While it’s understood that copyright infringement is wrong, has it really caused the industry to fall to its knees?  I think not.  There will always be sold out tours, actual cd sales, and everything that goes with the music industry.  

There doesn’t seem to be an easy answer to this problem.  SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are now gone but now there is CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). There is no end in sight...

Monstrous & Shocking: Piracy Case

A mother of four children in Minnesota downloaded music illegally and was brought to court and found guilty. The fine that she was given was $1.92 MILLION DOLLARS which equaled $80,000 per song to 6 of the big record companies. The judge was outraged with this fine and he slashed it drastically to $54,000 and he felt that this fine was harsh enough and in his words the original fine was "monstrous and shocking" and "a gross injustice".

The case was filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has brought suit against thousands of people for illegally downloading and sharing music, with most agreeing to settlements of between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars. This group consists of major music labels including Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. Records and UMG Recordings. The RIAA alone had managed to sue upwards of 35,000 people after their win against Napster, and when they had finally announced in late 2008 that they would stop filing lawsuits on a grand scale, they still reserved the right to sue particular offenders whom they deem to be the worst.

The behavior of the RIAA/MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) during the last decade has been nothing short of a schoolyard bully who has the teacher in his pocket. It’s not just the consumers who’ve had enough of the Industry’s nonsense, the ISP’s and even the actors and musicians who just ten years ago claimed they were being robbed are now standing up to call out the associations for their wonton disregard for their own customer-base. It’s important that it be stressed that it was not only the outlandish number of people that had been sued that brought this about, but several cases in which the RIAA, chiefly, managed to cross the line in such a way that the public could not help but demand action. 

 Read more at: http://phys.org/news183652712.html#jCp

SOPA

 

Ron Paul stated on 4/23/12 "Earlier this year strong public opposition led by several prominent websites forced Congressional leaders to cancel votes on two bills known in Washington as “SOPA” and “PIPA.” Both of these bills threatened search engines and websites with possible shutdowns if the Justice Department deemed them insufficiently cooperative with our phony “war on terror,” or if they were merely accused of copyright infringement. Fortunately the American public flooded Capitol Hill with phone calls and Congressional leaders dropped both bills.

Decline in Music Sales: Piracy or Not? That is the question!

Online piracy has become the biggest scapegoat for the music industry claiming that they are the reason for decline in music sales. They say that the recession of 2008 is a minor reason behind the decrease in sales of the music industry but the biggest player is the illegal act of online piracy.

"The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which hasn't released 2010 numbers, said 2009 retail sales from physical media like compact discs and albums dropped 20% from a year earlier to $4.38 billion and more than offset a 19% jump in sales from digital sales. Overall, U.S. music sales fell 12% in 2009 to about $7.69 billion, according to the RIAA."

"Illegal music downloads have fallen off markedly since peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing giant LimeWire shut down in October 2010. The number of P2P users downloading music late last year fell almost 45% from three years earlier to about 16 million people, NPD Group said in a report released last week."

 http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/04/02/music-industry-sings-a-sad-song-on-sales-despite-a-sharp-drop-of/

According to these quotes from the article, it is saying that physical cd sales are dropping by 20% while digital sales are increasing by 19%. This is a 1% difference so it is kind of cancelling itself out. It also quotes that music sales altogether dropped 12% to about $7.69 billion. Did they say billion? So, the music industry is still thriving and has remained a billion dollar industry due to the evolution of music in becoming digital.

File Sharing Animation

In this animation, the colored bars beneath the 7 computers represent the file that is being shared. Each color represents an individual file. These files come from the seed which is the big computer at the bottom.

There are numerous sites out there for downloading. Here are just a few:

LimeWire has been shut down!

This has been shut down!

How are these downloads done?

Peer to Peer File Sharing is how it's done! This is what allows internet users to download all of the wonderful things that they want to without paying for it. You can download music, movies, games, and other things of that nature and beyond. The act of file sharing is not illegal and using these peer to peer networks is also not illegal. The illegal part comes in when the copyright laws are violated when we download these things off of the internet.

 

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