There is a war raging throughout the music industry right now. Unfortunately it is not about which big star can sell the most records by producing the best music. Instead, this battle doesn’t really involve any big names at all. It is in fact, all about the little guy, the consumer, and more specifically the downloader. You know, the one who sits in front of his computer all day and night swapping files and downloading tracks from numerous websites. These people have been around for a lot longer than many of us realize. However it was very difficult to find music five or ten years ago. Only with the accessibility and ease of interface of sites such as Napster, Kazaa, and Morpheus did their numbers increase to a level that caused concern with many artists as well as the Record Industry Association of America. These parties were concerned that this boom of Peer-to-Peer file sharing was drastically reducing their profits and made a push to have these sites shut down and their users stopped, or at least made to pay for their use. They feel these sites are illegal and immoral. While the legal matters pertaining to this case are unclear and well beyond the realm of my understanding, I can speak to the morality of this issue and feel ver
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It is truly not fair and I feel that it merits some consideration as well. Even if they are producing excellent music, they cannot compete with the artists backed by the deep pockets of Warner Brothers, Universal, International and other huge corporate labels. People see things they like in videos and they buy the artist’s music without really listening to it. I am not the type of person to spend $20 for six or eight minutes of entertainment. What you may not realize is that the percentage of the $20 or so that you spend on a CD is quite disproportionate to the cost of the actual production cost of the disc itself. Social Darwinism at its best and this form of survival of the fittest will drastically improve the overall quality of the music industry, once again providing more money for those that deserve it. Not that they need any more success as it is. However, the creation of one off, various artists, discs that are simply an individuals favorite hits collection is not wrong at all and these small time music lovers should never be punished for their hobby. It is also hard to give the big guys credit because they didn’t try to make the Internet work for them. More access for more people to more music equals more people buying more music providing more money for artists to use for their own creative and production processes. Why didn’t they at least try to introduce some kind of similar service, one they could regulate themselves? This generation is so amazingly computer savvy and inclined to their computers in general, by embracing the Internet as another tool for obtaining music and offering it to consumers openly, they would have responded much more positively. The easiest way to compete with the big guys is to get their product on the Internet and allow people to discover and listen to it without all the commercial filler. They will continue to live quite comfortably, and do even now, despite all the controversy over file sharing.
One lesser note, which also applies to the legality of this issue, is the fact that most people who use file sharing networks or download mp3 files, do it to create CDs full of their favorite songs.
Though the outcome of the legal case against is yet to be determined, it seems to be clear on the moral front.
Approximate Word count =
1885
Approximate Pages =
8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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