Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Downloading Music
Many college students have strong opinions about whether they should be able to download music for free from the Internet. The issue was brought to a head when musicians sued Napster for providing the means to violate their copyright by distributing their music for free, which meant that the musicians would get no royalty for the music. Napster designed an application that made it easy for people to share MP3 files. Napster claimed that they only provided the medium and that those sharing the music were the ones violating copyright law (Business Wire, 2000).
Universities, most of whom provide Internet connections for their students, have two concerns over the practice of downloading music. First, they recognize that the students are breaking the law by acquiring, without payment, copyrighted material they should have paid for. But possibly more important to the universities, the high rates of downloads clogged the university's computer network system and interfered with computer use in the university (2). They are of course...
In one survey done in 2000, 40% of the universities had forbidden the use of Napster and others set up their networks so the students could not access it (2).
Some students claim that it's OK for them to download one song, and that if they want the whole album, they would then buy it. Students have described elaborate ways in which they think it's OK. One student limits himself to three downloads a night, to judge the CD before buying it, and says it opens him up to new kinds of music, so it should be allowed (The Record, 2003).
However, media spokesmen and performers all believe that downloading costs them money. Critics of the practice of downloading copyrighted music point out that very often a CD may only have two or three really outstanding songs. If people have the right to download a few songs, the need to buy the CD drops significantly (The Record, 2003).
It seems likely that most students have…
Bibliography
Bedell, Doug. 2001. "Napster Ordered to Block Pirating of Copyrighted Music Files." The Dallas Morning News, March 7.
Editorial Staff. 2000. "The artist must get paid." The Boston Herald, July 30.
Editorial Staff. 2003. "Downloading music: Is it wrong?" The Record (Bergen County, NJ) Oct. 24.
Schubert, Ruth. 2000. "Campuses Stopping the Music from Napster." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 19.
However, there are certain actions the university can take on which would help deter students from committing such crimes in the future. Opening up potential contracts with legal music downloading programs can help curb the tie of illegal downloads, while still keeping prices for legal music at a minimum for already struggling college students, (Burk 2007). Another recommendation which would prove effective is limitations on certain types of downloading programs
..for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research" was a more important right to protect under Fair Use Doctrine (Liebowitz, 1985, p.4). Freedom of access to information was more important, and creating an unregulated market environment of ideas. Granted, file sharing is not always used for such a legitimate purpose, but then again, neither were 'taped' VHS movies and programs. While
There is one platform that supports the downloaders, however. Studies have indicated that downloading music for free actually helps sell music in the long run. The music industry cites fallen revenues for the last four years as evidence that illegal downloading is cutting into their profits. However, a study by two academic researchers finds that some people who download music illegally eventually purchase the music they have downloaded. A reporter
Ilbo, Hankook, "Illegal Distribution of Movies Bleeding the Film Industry," Korea Times, 7 December. 1999 Tuesday, Pg. 1. LexisNexis. Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, CA. 20 Apr. 2017. According to government agencies of the film industry, illegal downloading of movies online has expanded recently. Ilbo states that when movies come out online a few weeks after the movie has come out in theaters affects the film industry financially. These damages are not
Arguably the deficiencies in processes and technologies throughout the distribution channel enable the unethical sharing of digital property by consumers in the first place. it's as if the incompetence of these channel partners' platforms, either from a website standpoint with the support of DRM technologies or the reliance on faulty, often poorly designed DRM systems, technologies and techniques create much opportunity to take digital and intellectual property and repurpose it
Vargas outlines a broader pattern in the consumer world which informs the proposal here, indicating that there is a splintering of all marketplaces between online and retail outlets which is changing the way that the latter must conduct business. These are ideas that direct the strategy here suggested for Midwest University. Accordingly, key terms which will be considered in the proposal are those of 'file-sharing,' 'intellectual property,' and 'online piracy.'