Piracy

I personally do not find the "piracy" of music to be such an offensive act. After reading this article, I found even more reason as to why I believe that it is not a bad thing. For example, most CDs are sold around $15 each. It's states in the chapter that the Chinese get access to the same CDs for only 50 cents each. So, with the record industry claiming to lose 4.6 billion dollars a year due to piracy, it seems to me that Americans are getting screwed as well. If they can sale copies for 50 cents, yet charge us $15 then they seem to be the one's that should be accused of piracy. And if they sold them cheaper, maybe then piracy wouldn't be such a problem.

Another thing stated in the chapter is the example of Microsoft allowing the Chinese to have bootleg copies of their software so that, in the long run, more Chinese will see the software and start to buy it. This just proves that companies are happy to break the law as long as they get to profit from it. Which makes them no better than the ones stealing from them.

It is also stated in the chapter that the law aims to rid the use of piracy that robs the author of his profit. But, on average, a Musician really only sees 50 cents for each CD sold. Most of their money comes from concerts. And as the chapter states, the difference in downloading music and stealing a CD is that the CD stolen is one less CD for sale. But downloading an album does not take a CD of the shelf. So a scenario probably not researched is that the millions of claimed people that download music probably attend concerts of the bands they are interested in. Therefore, increasing the money that artists make.

There are roughly 300 million people living in the United States. Of these 300 million, 100 million are members of Kazaa, the most popular p2p sharing network. So with a 3rd of the country being apart of it, along with millions of others that apart of other networks such as Limewire, the chances of officers and other officials who are suppose to rid this "piracy" are more than likely involved with it themselves.

Again, as I stated before, the companies are more than happy to be apart of this piracy as long as they benefit from it. This is recognized again later in the chapter when he describes the four parts of piracy. Type B is defined as someone downloading a song and if he/she likes it, the hope is that he/she will go buy the CD or refer a friend to buy it. Again, the companies would do nothing about piracy if this were the only way it worked.

In 2002 it was reported that CD sales fell 8.9 percent and it was blamed directly on piracy. But What was failed to be reported was that the number of CDs released were dropped 20 percent. So their were 20 percent less CDs for sale. so if you do the math, if the CD sales falling 8.9 were directly due to piracy, then sales would be down 28.9 percent.

It also shows that the law decided by Congress is that the copyright holder does not get all the value that his copyright created and has never accorded the copyright owner complete control over all possible uses of his work. Therefore, a loop-hole is created in the copyright and the artist is not entitled to all that the copyright states.

So in my opinion, downloading music from the internet is not robbing the artist at all. Not only might it be helping the artist by increasing attendance at concerts, but it is shown that lawfully the artist is not due all that his copyright states. Besides, programs like iTunes who sale songs individually for .99 each are seeing more money off these albums than the artist himself.