file sharing music: Help or harm the industry?
Below is an essay of sorta I have written based on a mixture of my opinion (probably too much of that, where your comments might be helpful) and facts on sharing music over the internet and effects on the industry and artists. Please bring up any point you feel are wrong or poorly backed up, and provide reasons or counterpoints.
This is an issue very close to home for me so it may be biased, any arguments against sharing music are welcome.
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The music industry claims a lot of monetary losses through file sharing on the grounds that every download would otherwise have been a sale, which is a flawed logic. In fact many people download music and then go on to buy it later if they liked it (if they hadn't they would not have bought it, and buying something you don't like you end up taking it back to the CD shop anyway).
Those people who do not buy any music CDs at all but do download music are possibly causing a small revenue loss to the industry, but on the whole are people who don't value music incredibly highly and would not have purchased many, maybe any CDs if they could not download.
Music shared on the internet is comparable with the quality of a very cheap radio, often not even that good, and therefore serves as little better than a kind of sample which helps promote the musicians. I-tunes and other online music shops sell these low quality versions of tracks as downloads at almost the same expense as the comparatively much better sounding CDs.
Without the internet and arguably file sharing to promote musicians, many ticket sales for concerts would be lost. Also, only bands the music industry decides are popular enough to be properly produced and sold (also known as cookie cutter bands) would be heard and new upcoming talent and originality is ignored and effectively crushed. The internet is a good place where new, original bands may be found and heard thus gaining otherwise ignored bands a fan base controlled not by an executive in the music industry's decision but by the people who like the music themselves.
It is also often noted that artists get a pittance out of the profit made from a CD sale and would make a much lager profit selling on-line at 20 pence a track independently than allowing the industry and retailers to soak up all the profits. My personal wish is to listen to and support the artists, not some large industry that discourages my taste in music if it happens to be less than hugely popular.
�UK record companies are celebrating their best ever year for album sales, with a record 237 million sold in the 12 months to September. �- BBC news during final quarter of 2004. And yet, even with this success, the BPA (British phonographic industry) are deciding to start suing major file-sharers in the UK. Suing people who are freely giving up bandwidth for the promotion of content they enjoy at no advertising expense.
To try and protect their 'intellectual property', DRM (digital right management) is being developed and products encumbered with this are already being sold alongside other CDs. DRM restricts the legitimate customers use of the product they bought to try and make it only playable and copyable in ways which the DRM determines rather than any way a customer sees fit. (copying to lend to a friend, play in a car CD player, use on portable music players. Sometimes even won't play on normal CD players). While people with no intention or little want to illegally distribute the content on their CDs are having their rights reduced, those who want to copy the media still do via 'cracking' the DRM, and whatever type of DRM is introduced it will be possible to copy from the speaker output manually. In short, you cannot prevent a media being copied but you can limit the rights of your customers.
Online music sales services are rapidly becoming more popular ways to get music. Although it may never fully replace hard copies of the product (until the restricted uses of the hard copy are at least as bad as the online counterpart). Far from every person who enjoys music has a computer.
Secure online sales will continue to increase as price drops and/or quality of service improves and people can continue to select individual tracks they want to buy.
It is equally flawed to sue a 12 year old as any other age group for downloading music. A 12 year old may well be more innocent, and also may be the most likely age group to download popular music (the genre which the industry thrives on most) but a 12 year old would never have been able to buy very much music with pocket money or off of the parents wallets, meaning that there is no 'financial loss' occurring due to these downloads, merely free gain on the part of the child.
