What is internet piracy? Internet piracy is also known as theft of media online. In other words, it is unauthorized use of Internet media. This has known to be illegal, however many continue to do this. There are many programs and websites out there that allow this. You can do this with music, movies, and other kinds of media. In most websites, the music and other media comes from many users of the programs. For instance, in music, a person on these websites gives permission for other users to copy their music from their library. One can burn music from CDs that were legally purchased and save them to their library, or they can illegally burn music from other users who have also authorized their music to be copied by other users.
The biggest issue with doing this is the money lost from people not going out to purchase CDs. It is getting easier for many to download music and burning it on to blank CDs rather than buying a CD from the artist. People love the fact that they save money in doing this and can also burn many songs from different artists rather than buying one CD for each artist when the buyers only like a couple of the songs on the CD. Some sites are legally used to obtain music however you do have to pay for each song or CD. Unfortunately for the music industry, they cannot control what people put out on the internet.
I do not believe that the music industry will ever completely stop internet piracy from happening. Anyone can put just about anything on the internet even media that does not belong to them. It is difficult and time consuming to fish for these companies that allow internet piracy and the music industry is already a very busy industry to do this. They can’t exactly call the cops every time they find these sites either because cops have bigger issues to deal with. Even if the music industry is able to shut down a website that allows piracy, they can put up another website and call it something else.
Who loses money from internet piracy? Well, musicians, believe it or not, are not the losers in this. The artists receive money from many sources other than copyright. They actually do not get much from copyright so they do not end up losing much money if they lose anything at all. The ones that lose from this is the music industry. That is because they control property rights so they lose more from internet piracy. The musicians still receive money from their music being played on the radio or on TV and other sources. The music industry, on the other hand, only gets money from the music being sold when the musician has more sources of income and more ways of making money. An artist can always allow for their music to be used on commercials and they get money from that, they can also appear in commercials to sell other products while getting paid for that and getting their face out there to get more fans. This is the unfortunate truth with internet piracy.
Can you believe that just a couple of years ago the only way to get a hold of an artist’s music was to buy the CD? Or what about cassette tapes? Haha it seems insane to think back to a time full of beepers, VHS tapes, and huge boxy televisions. It’s sad to me how nobody buys CDs anymore really. There’s no point, anymore. If you don’t have an iPod in this day and age people look at you like you’re from another planet or something. Music is all digital and the musicians themselves are the ones that get screwed out of their hard earned cash when people use Peer-to-Peer sharing networks to download music illegally. Some might think that because they are already so rich that they aren’t getting cheated out of much and that “we have the right” to download music for free, but not every artist is super rich, ya know? Especially small indie groups, who ultimately need every cent they can get in order to continue touring and/or producing new music and make it big. I wish that more people cared and that there was something we could do to really put a stop to internet piracy, however, I don’t know that there’s much that we can do.
ReplyDeleteWe never really see their bottom lines. How much money are they losing? They are still making millions. I think alot of it is just greed. I know I would be very happy to make half of what they do.
ReplyDeleteLets make it to the big time and what does real success look like anyway? I understand struggling artists and all but they are taking the penalty’s for illegal downloading too far. Most people or fans end up hating on the companies and artist’s that do that. It’s not right to steal but they look at their lifestyles and think gosh how much do you need? You’re tripping off a song. Give a little back to the people who do make you a success. I love to hear when a band offers a free download. I think how nice.You can never feed greed and have it full, never. When they start busting teenagers instead of the people making them available I have to draw the line. Of course kids need to be accountable but the real accountability lies with the source. I bet a 13 yr. old kid or their parents have no where near the bucks they do and they want to fine them like $1000.00 dollars for an illegal download. That is ridiculous and imbalanced. Whoever is making the downloads available should be stopped.