Arrrrrrrrr! Music Piracy

In today's society, I would guarantee that almost every teenager has heard of a program called Limewire. Limewire is what is called a "peer to peer" file sharing program, which enables one user to connect to another to download a particular file in a matter of minutes. I would also guarantee that in using programs like Limewire, these people do not believe they are doing any wrong. The RIAA tells us that piracy is illegal, but downloading music is not hurting anyone.

When you really think about the big picture, the ability to do such things is kind of amazing. So why all the fuss? According to Ken C. Pohlmann, an estimate of $4 billion is lost to piraters. However, this loss is hitting the MUSIC INDUSTRY, not the artists themselves. The artists get barely any CD royalties after all the cuts are taken out, and they probably did most of the work! They make the majority of their money from touring and selling merchandise, so when they try to say that the artist is losing out, it’s only a matter of a small fraction of pay. In fact, some artists use the act of downloading music as a means of free advertisements. Some artists even endorse it! If your sources of cash flow are against you, you might want to watch out before they end up taking their talent elsewhere.

Music is not the only offender of copyright infringement. The New York Times reports that film piracy is the result of over ten thousand or more lost jobs, as well as a loss of $6.1 billion in the year 2005. In my opinion, it’s their own fault. How long do you have to wait for a movie to come out on DVD after it hits theatres? In most cases it’s several months. Sometimes people want to avoid the hustle and bustle of the theatres and watch it in the comfort of their homes, which provides the supply and demand market for bootleg films. Maybe the film industry should start facing the demands and start supplying. If your customers want change maybe you should listen to them instead of slapping all sorts of fines and penalties in their faces. Disregarding the money that the theatres would lose, why not just make the film available for viewing via a cable service for the price of a movie ticket (or more) when it first comes out, and then when it hits DVD and video, lower the price to the standard DVD and VHS price?

Since pirating music and videos among other things is viewed as illegal, devices such as iPods, VCRs, CD Burners, and DVD players should also be made illegal because they aid in the duplication of such things. (Hayes 38). This is completely irrational. I doubt that Sony put out a VCR and told the consumers “Here is a VCR, please use it to illegally duplicate films.” They are pulling in innocent companies and threatening to make THEM lose money, all because they need to find someone to blame for their own losses. This is completely irrational and unnecessary.

The music industry is, however, trying its best to accommodate the growing digital world,