BAb3s

Many years ago, the only way to own music was to go to a store and purchase a record. Nowadays, with many technological advances, it’s much easier. One can purchase music in a variety of formats- online, in stores, and even on your phone. Stealing music used to be considered shoplifting a CD or record. Now it’s much easier and common. The internet is the obvious culprit. 

With the internet came an array of shared knowledge. File sharing is a popular method to do exactly as the title says- share files. Programs such as Napster and Limewire began to do just that. However, while sharing seems like a positive thing, sharing music that hasn’t been purchased is in fact stealing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this practice is stopping any time soon.

With computers began the access of remote files using bulletin board systems in 1978 and Hotline in 1997 which enabled users to communicate through chat to exchange files. In June of 1999 music changed forever with the release of Napster as a centralized peer-to-peer system, generally regarded as the first of its kind.

Nowadays, 95% of music is illegally downloaded. The evolution of social media is a vehicle that has pushed this illegal activity with sites such as Myspace Music. In 2008, the music industry saw a 24% rise with purchases of individual song purchases. This shows that people may not be willing to spend a larger amount of money on an entire album but instead buy the best song for a small amount. 

The chart below demonstrates the rise, and then the fall of the music industry up to 2009. The digital age has forever changed the music sales, no doubt about it. 

Rob, R., & Waldfogel, J. (2006). Piracy on the High C’s: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare in a Sample of College Students. Journal of Law and Economics, 49. Retrieved November 13, 2011, from the JSTOR database.

Ray Ku, R. S. (2002). The Creative Destruction of Copyright: Napster and the New Economics of Digital Technology. The University of Chicago Law Review, 69, 263-324. Retrieved November 13, 2011, from the JSTOR database.

chloekhalifa asked: Also, in regard to Kelsey's "what we could have done better" post. I definitely think we should have all created tumblrs so we could reply to eachothers posts. I only recently though about it when I posted a post and allowed "reply's" only to find out I could only reply on the account I am on right now. That would have been neat!! Also it would have been a lot more organized, but this is still ok! Just a little more, all over the place. I am proud of our tumblr though. It is very unique.

chloekhalifa asked: In regards to "Illegal Downloading - Playing Devil’s Advocate". I agree with Kelsey when she says "what makes artists so deserving of my $1.29" but what about for the good of our economy, not just the good of the artist. I am really interested in economics lately, and the music industry plays a large part in the United States' GDP. Illegal downloading of mp3's lowers our GDP since it is nt accounted fot.

Ever since the beginning of time music has been a major part of the cultural world. Even so, music as an economic market wasn’t firmly established until the end of the 18^th century. On May 31^st, 1790 Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States was created and established copyright protection. This law entitled songwriters to compensation when their product was used by consumers. This turning point would eventually lead the world of music from a social pastime into a prestigious industry.

         Prior to the more modern use of cassettes, CDs, and MP3s, music was via sheet music to be played on instruments or sung by the purchaser. This sheet music was distributed to subscribers of the publisher. Once the law was passed, music publishers were able to sell their sheet music ‘a la carte’ to whomever wanted to purchase it, instead of in groups of pieces only to subscribers. Even at this point the music industry was very competitive.

         in 1877, Thomas Edison stumbled upon the ability to record a human voice which he uses to create the phonograph. Over the course of the next decade Edison, Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter challenged the invention with better and better models such as the “graphophone”. This eventually leads to the 1888 invention of the gramophone, which used discs instead of a cylinder and recorded up to 2 minutes of sound. These were used in the original “nickel jukeboxes” which were leased to fairgrounds. Unfortunately the economy along with the limited utility of the machines lead to poor sales and the eventual downfall of most leasing companies at the time.

         At the turn of the century, new and improved recording technology lead to a boom of pre-recorded music sales as well as arguments over the copyright laws in place for recorded music as well as public performances of music without permission. Since the law was written before the invention of recorded sound the Copyright Act of 1909 was put in place. This Act stated that artists must register their work so that they are given the exclusive right to use it. This act also began the use of royalties for when people use an artists work.

         In the 1930s the FM radio was born and made music immensely more accessible. The radio made it incredibly easy to promote music sales. While making listeners feel as if they are getting the music for free, sales of music went up due to interest in the music that the listeners hear on the radio. From the 1950s to the 1970s further advances in technology led to an even bigger industry with LP (long playing) albums, to cassettes, to 8-track tapes.

         The 1970s, bootleg vinyl and unauthorized tape sales lead to the 1971 Sound Recording Amendment. The negative effects of “home taping” on the music industry sales and economy foreshadowed the effects of illegal downloading today.  

 Faulk, G. K., Lambert, R. P., & Rolston, C. (2005). The Effects of Changing Technology and Government Policy on the Commercialization of Music. Journal Of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 13(1/2), 75-90. doi:10.1300/j054v13n01

Not all websites and programs where you can download music illegally are here to stay. Oftentimes, these websites and programs get shut down. The government has recently been cracking down hard on illegally downloading music. Associated with getting in trouble for downloading music illegally are fines and, in extreme cases, incarceration. 

Many illegal downloaders use platforms such as Limewire, Mediafire, web torrents, etc. Apple tried to make a legal way to download music with a program called Acquisition. To use acquisition, one had to pay a one time fee of $30. After you paid, you could download as much music as you desired. This would be entirely legal, and it was a type of file sharing. File sharing is one major way that people can download music illegally. A few years later, Acquisition became illegal to use and was shut down. You can still open the program, but nothing will download. Also, users took a hit, because they were not credited back with the $30 that they previously paid. 

File sharing is a way that illegal downloaders attempt to get around the legal backlash. The music industry is slowly but surely suffering from file sharing, according to R.S. Ray Ku. This peer-to-peer file sharing is destroying the music industry and hurting the artists. The music industry is trying to work with the government on the legality of downloading music. They, together, do not want to open ways to the illegal downloading of music, and they want to prevent illegal downloading as much as possible to help the music industry from spinning out of control. 

Ray Ku, R. S. (2002). The Creative Destruction of Copyright: Napster and the New Economics of Digital Technology. The University of Chicago Law Review, 69, 263-324. Retrieved November 13, 2011, from the JSTOR database.

Wingrove, T., Korpas, A., & Victoria, W. (2011, March 1). Why were millions of people not obeying the law? Motivational influences on non-compliance with the law in the case of music piracy.. Psychology, Crime & Law, pp. 261-276.

I was thinking about how I wish we could reply to each others posts directly, but we can’t because we are all technically the same user. Not that we can do anything about this now but it would’ve been cool if we had all made our own tumblr and only followed (or whatever the tumblr equivilent to “following” or “friending” is haha) 

Obviously thats a “shoulda woulda coulda” now but since this porject is also about working as a group I thought a brief “things we could’ve done differently” post would be appropriate? 

xoxo

Kelsey

I agree that it is hard to decide whether or not illegally downloading music is right or wrong. I think most people would agree that it is wrong, yet I am sure that the majority of those people still illegally download music anyways. I would say that I am probably one of these people. I love my favorite artists, and I certainly love their music, but I definitely do not love paying for each one of these artists’ songs. Although I do think that we should feel somewhat morally obligated for music, people, including myself, are never going to completely change their minds and stop downloading music illegally. 

-Anna

The history of the distribution and various formats of music throughout society can be dated back hundreds of years. There have been vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, and the newest form, MP3. This new edition of electronically stored music changed the way society obtained and shared music forever. The file format MP3 introduced the possibility to compress large audio files into more easy to handle files. For music lovers it became possible to store lots of MP3 files on computers or share them with others, using an Internet connection and file transfer protocols. (Carlsson and Gustavsson, 2001) This new format had a large impact on the music industry as well. Sales of physical copies of music decreased dramatically.

With this new age of MP3 format also came the new age of illegally downloading music. The way of change that would see fans turning to the Internet for their tunes, and away from the distribution networks built by large entertainment corporations, began, as is so often the case, with a couple of bright collegiate misfits. Though they did very little research, not much coding, and developed no new ways to compress music, what they did was build a Web site that offered a new way for people to get music and for musicians to reach an audience. (Alderman, 2001) The illegal downloading of music was brought into society by the website Napster. People didn’t have to pay for music they could simply download it off the website. Napster introduced a peer-to-peer environment providing easy mechanisms for connecting different users and their MP3 file resources. Each of the peers could use a lookup service provided by Napster to find out where to retrieve wanted MP3 files, and also provide their own files. That is, Napster provided a centralized register of locations of files but the files themselves remained at the individual users. Napster quickly became a tremendous success with almost a hundred million users downloading MP3 music for free. (Carlsson and Gustavsson, 2001)

If it seems too good to be true, that’s because it was. Legal battles arose due to copyright infringements on the music that was being shared for free on the site. Artists were not happy their music could be accessed for free and that they weren’t making a profit of off it. While on the other hand, the majority of society loved being able to get music without having to pay for it. The overall view was that even though it was deemed illegal, how could anyone really catch you in the act?

Alderman, J. (2001). Sonic boom: Napster, MP3, and the new pioneers of music. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub.

Carlsson, Bengt, and Rune Gustavsson. Active Media Technology, 6th International Computer Science Conference, AMT 2001, Hong Kong, China, December 20, 2001