Piracy Versus Record Industries

Piracy versus Record Industries

In the age of technology and information, the Internet has become widely used for a variety of reasons. Many people, especially teenagers and college students, love to download things off the Internet. Everything is right there in front of them. With a few clicks of the mouse and some intelligent searching strategies, a world of information awaits their curious minds. There is much to be found: movies, computer games, books, reference guides, almost anything you want are there to download. Everyone’s favorite is downloading music, it is easily accessible on the Internet and everybody loves music. At first, the “hot” thing was to use Napster, a peer to peer sharing program, meaning one person is downloading something from another person’s computer. This became a problem for RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America), and decided to begin suing anyone caught sharing or downloading copyrighted files. This policy is irrational and should be modified to fit reasons for downloading or sharing.

If a person hears a good song on the radio, that person would remember the song and artist, and try to download it. After a while, record companies realized that this was causing them to lose business, and so there was a big court mess about the legality of downloading music. The popular peer-to-peer servers are Gnutella, Morpheus, and Kazaa. The legality of these sites and all sites like it is hotly debated. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced on June 25, 2003, that it will begin suing users of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems. The problem with this policy is that it includes everyone connected to the computer that was used for downloading. This policy does not investigate who is really at fault, but rather, RIAA slaps a subpoena to the person they think is at fault. The RIAA does not care enough about who they sue to investigate, and if they are mistaken, they will just sue again.

This policy is destroying relationships with the consumers; it might also be making the pirating problem worst. When the RIAA sues a consumer, the person who owns the computer that is identified through its IP address is the person charge for the crime committed, if this should even be deemed as a “crime. A recent article about an RIAA lawsuit stated that the RIAA tried to sue the mother of the 14 year old child who was caught downloading music. The judge dismissed the case and the RIAA then tried to sue the child for the crime committed.” RIAA is basically playing ”hit or miss” lawsuits or in this case “hit again if you miss.” RIAA is on a suing rampage. They are also suing companies that stream music like radio, for example: Sirius and XM satellite radio. This rampage will cause more problems in the future than keeping problems under control.

And as though attacking a consumer wasn’t bad enough, what about the true fans of the music, artist, or group. Attacking fans, which are the reason for the artist’s success, is really the opposite of what RIAA should be doing. RIAA policy states that when a person buys or trades a "bootleg" CD, they are taking dollars away from the artist or group who made the recording. First, these recordings are usually not available from the artist. They are mostly live performances, demos, or outtakes that the group does not