Sam Mitchell Mitchell 1
Mrs. LoMonte
English
4 December 2010
Music Piracy
Music piracy is one of the most used forms of piracy. Millions across the world download songs from the hottest artists without paying one penny. Is this right? After all the hard work and time put into making music, should one be allowed to download the music completely for free? Some of you may ask, what even is piracy? According to thinkquest.org, “piracy is the illegal copying of copyrighted material”. Lately, the United States government has been working extremely hard on shutting down many of the music piracy websites and servers.
Before the crackdown of piracy websites, people were constantly downloading free music. There were and still are tons of ways to do this. One of the most common ways was to download an application that is similar to i-Tunes, except users could obtain all of the music they desired for free. Some of the most popular of these file-sharing applications are LimeWire, Bearshare, and Morpheus. This software works by connecting your computer to another person’s computer, who has the same software. Files are shared between the two computers, and then downloaded. This is where the term “file-sharing” comes from. LimeWire, which is probably the most used file-sharing software, has recently been shut down by the US LimeWire has apparently caused the music industry to lose millions of dollars. Some argue that these file-sharing communities are actually good, but the statistics show it’s only a good thing for the downloader, who illegally
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saves hundreds to thousands of dollars. In fact, the guardian.com says that in 2009, US recorded music sales fell 7.7 billion dollars. This happened at a time that the music piracy industry hit a growth spurt.
Although the government is trying its best to crackdown on these music piracy websites and applications, people are constantly discovering and creating new ways of downloading music illegally. People are beginning to use converter sites, where one takes a YouTube video and puts it into the website, which then converts the audio to a downloadable file. These websites are just as harmful to artists and record companies as the previously mentioned ones. Although the US government has not began to shut down these websites, it is certain that they will soon be banned or strictly observed to make sure that no copyrighted music is downloaded.
The future of music piracy is unfortunately a strong one. In no way can the government crack down on all of the websites and software that offer illegal downloads of copyrighted music. The people who download music through this software have to be the difference makers. If people stop file sharing, this whole illegal industry can be halted and eventually put out of business.
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