In recent years, the recording industry has been fighting a losing war to maintain and increase CD sales levels. The reason for lower sales is not that recorded music has become unpopular. The reasons are because Internet technology and servers like MP3, Monster, Kazaa and other web sites allow users to download the music free of charge or for a small percentage of what a CD would cost in a music store or to buy on line. Once downloaded by a user, that user can use file sharing to distribute the CD to hundreds of people over the Internet. As the effect, the recording companies that have invested in copyrighting their intellectual properties and their artists are being cheated out of millions of dollars annually. The issue is that the United States has laws protecting intellectual property and people who download music without paying for it are not only depriving the recording companies of revenues but are breaking the law.
             The Sound Recording Act of 1995....Authorizes those who make phonorecords or digital phonorecord deliveries, when phonorecords of a nondramatic musical work have been distributed to the public in the United States under the authority of the copyright owner, to obtain a compulsory license to make and distribute phonorecords of the work" (Dmusic 3). Those who violate this law by downloading CDS, or making 100s of illegal copies and selling them for their own profit, are stealing from the recording companies and the performing artists, depriving both of important revenues. The American recording industry serves a $33.7 billion market annually. But, in recent years, the industry has lost over 10 percent of its income because of the illegal downloading of CDs and file sharing with others without paying the record companies a licensing fee. Ted Cohen, EMI's vice president of news media, explains the industry's position: "We need a minimal degree of copy protection to slow down frictionless trad...