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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Piracy Statistics

What is Internet Piracy?

"Internet piracy is the unlawful reproduction and/or distribution of any copyrighted digital file that can change hands over the Internet.  This can be done with music files, videos and movies, e-books, software, and other materials."

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-internet-piracy.htm