By Austin Clarke
Music is a part of everyone’s lives. No one goes a day without listening to some form of music mostly because it is entertaining.
Music is a big industry, with the bands themselves, record labels, management, and clothing, and when industries get big, people will want to steal its product. In the musical field, this act is known as piracy.
Piracy is the illegal copying of copyrighted material. Piracy is not only limited to music, but also applies to video games, software, illustrations, books, movies, or any intellectual property that is copyrighted by law. Piracy is prohibited by the Copyright Act of 1976.
Piracy is as simple as borrowing a friend’s CD and making a copy of it for you. Many people do not realize they are committing piracy when they do this, because it is such a simple act.
Piracy hurts bands and record labels because they lose revenue. According to the Institute for Policy Innovation, global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year.
It is estimated that 71,060 U.S. jobs are lost per year, which equals a loss of $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings. Piracy of music causes a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax, and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.
In an era where technology is everywhere, acts of piracy can easily be committed; but people who commit the acts can be caught, arrested, and sued by record labels and bands. An example of this is the case against former peer-to-peer file sharing website, Napster. Peer-to-peer file sharing means to distribute or to allow access to computer files, such as music or videos. Napster was shut down by the band Metallica after the band heard their song “I Disappear” on the radio, and was unreleased at the time. Metallica traced the leaked song to Napster and filed a lawsuit, which eventually lead to Napster being bought by Best Buy. Now you must pay for songs on Napster, just like on iTunes, Zune, and Rhapsody.
Other peer-to-peer websites or programs include Limewire, which, like Napster, was also shut down for copyright infringement.
People will also distribute songs as videos on the popular video website, Youtube. When songs are included on any website without consent of the artist or record labels, those songs can, have, and will be removed from the website for breaking copyright law. Unfortunately, people are still stealing music.
With today’s advancements in technology, piracy is becoming harder to track and harder to determine who is distributing the music. It’s impossible to listen to a song and tell if it is an illegal copy of the song or not.
The reason piracy continues is because some people don’t want to pay for music.
The bottom line is that piracy has become a serious issue, especially in music. Artists write, perform, and sell their music for a living. They travel in vans or buses, touring from state to state and perform so that they may make money for food and gas and to support themselves and their families. Stop piracy and support bands by buying their music and merchandise before great artists have no livelihood.
Photo Credit: http://feministsforchoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/music-notes.jpg
