People today are constantly listening to music, whether it may be
rap, hip hop or country. Some prefer to purchase CD's while others
download their music. There is a huge ethical issue today in the music
industry in regards to illegal downloading or pirating of music.
People can easily download music for free with applications such as
uTorrent and websites such as
Zippyshare.
Why would someone go to a store, such as HMV or iTunes, and pay $10 for
a CD or album, when you can easily find a torrent or file hosting site
sharing the album for free. You can easily Google the song you want
followed by "download" and thousands of websites with download links to
that song will show up.
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| Photo from Joey Lai |
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Organizations such as
RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)
are trying very hard to stop illegal downloading of music from
happening by introducing new copyright laws. The RIAA are now tracking
and shutting down IP addresses of websites that are sharing/hosting
songs and music downloads. One big website that many of us are aware of,
MegaUpload, was recently shut down because of copyright acts. The RIAA
says that the owners of MegaUpload made tons of money by sharing songs
to the general public, but not a cent was given to the songwriter,
artists or labels.
Companies such as Apple are also trying to help songwriters, artists and labels from losing money through
iTunes.
iTunes is an online store hosted by Apple that allow users to
conveniently purchase and download their music online at a low cheap
price without breaking the law. Instead of driving down to your local
music store, you can easily go on iTunes and download a song for $0.99.
Some people may argue that there is nothing wrong
downloading one or two songs illegally and supporting only the artists
you like. What are your opinions about this issue? Do you like to "own"
your music collection, or download/share your collection to the general
public?
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