Downloading Music the Music Industry

Downloading Music

The music industry reports that the problem of people sharing copyrighted music files via the Internet, circumventing payment for the product, continues in spite of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. They report that this illegal activity accounts for 31% of the drop in sales for the music industry (Editorial staff, 2003). Acquiring recorded music without paying for it when it shoud be paid for shortchanges not only the artists but all the people who work in the background to produce recorded music, and is unethical behavior. People who download copyrighted music should therefore be prosecuted for this illegal behavior to the fullest extent of the law.

However, in spite of the fact that sharing copyrighted music and DVD's via the Internet is clearly illegal, many people find ways to rationalize doing exactly that. The industry has played an unintended role in that behavior by encrypting their data to the point that people cannot fast-forward through a DVD or skip previews of coming movies that have already been viewed (Barlas, 2003). Once that encryption has been broken, the illegally downloaded CD or DVD is actually more usable. Although we think of this as a United States problem, these illegal exchanges of digital files occur all over the world: in Brazil, the use of sites like Kaaza to download music, especially for MP3 use, is very common (Author not available, 2003).

Other uses of copyrighted music in unencrypted form lends itself to humorous uses, such as "mash-ups," where someone takes the vocal track from one song and combines it with the instrumental track of another (Johnson, 2005), in the process violating both copyrights but producing a unique file that may interesting, odd or even bizarre