Technology is Changing the Way We Listen to Music

Downloading MP3s from the Internet should be made legal. An MP3 is a near CD quality digital recording of a musical piece that is compressed so it can be distributed through the Internet (Simple Net). High prices, new technology, and availability are causing most music lovers to turn to the Internet to listen to their music. It's convenient to search a computer database for a song you've been wanting to hear by your favorite artist, download it, and copy it on to a CD. More and more people are doing this because with the help of search engines it's possible to find any song imaginable and download it for free. What most people don't realize is that the reproduction of a musical work, distribution of copies of a musical piece, and the public performance of the work without the copyright owner's consent are all violations of copyright laws (Anderman and Paez 5). However, they do know that getting caught for this crime is very unlikely. Catching those who violate copyright laws is very tricky because in most cases it's hard to tell who is at fault. Because of very detailed, complicated copyright

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An Internet Service Provider or ISP does not have the right to alter any measures taken by the copyright owner to protect their work.

Bibliography

Works Cited

Anderman, Jason M.

Under the DMCA a service provider is required to provide designated information about them so they can be notified of pirated materials, such as MP3s, on their web sites (Anderman and Paez 7). However, it's these same safe harbors that provide ways to escape liability when an individual does violate copyright laws. A recent lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America or the RIAA against Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc.

The increasing popularity of MP3s has resulted in the need for copyright law reforms.

MP3s are available on the Internet for free, and because of this there is no way for a musician to make any money. However, if someone is willfully infringing copyright laws for financial benefits, they can be sentenced to five years imprisonment and $250,000 in fines (Simple Net). To avoid this regulations were placed on Internet Service Providers that require them to refresh the system cache so often to prevent the MP3 from being available too long (8). laws even prosecuting a web site for promoting pirated music is almost too difficult to attempt. The out link doesn't provide much information for the destination site and is the most common type of link used on the Internet (10). This makes it very difficult for the copyright owner to make money from their music because they can easily be cheated out of their share of royalties. They must also develop a policy that allows them to punish or get rid of all account holders who infringe the material (10).

Approximate Word count = 2175
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

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