Illegal Music Downloads Are an Uprising Problem: What Should You Do?

More than five billion songs were illegally downloaded last year, and record sales have dropped over 20% in the last year (Lauria). Lauria is referring to the copyrighted songs that can be illegally downloaded on the Internet, and the negative impact that this has on the music industry. This is highly illegal, because it violates copyright laws in the United States. Not only do illegal downloads violate copyright laws, but they cause the artists doing the actual work to not be credited or paid for their work. Music artists, film producers, and many other media producers spend day and night creating media, which will in turn be stolen and used for free. In a survey conducted within the last year by SurveyU, out of 500 students at Northern Michigan University, 98% have illegally downloaded at least one copyrighted file (Mead).

This means that out of 500 students, 490 have broken the United States copyright laws, and probably continue to on a daily basis. People are not even concerned about what they are doing when they get online and start browsing for songs to download for free. People have to realize that those songs were not created to be distributed for free. Songs are put on the market just like anything else, to make money. Artists spend endless amounts of time on their work, and they are making no money when file sharers illegally download their work for free.

Not only do the actual artists miss out on the money that they deserve for their work, but record companies also work hard to distribute these media files to the public and are losing money now because no one buys their products at a store, they instead steal them from the Internet. The bottom line is that downloading copyrighted files is illegal, regardless of the situation. Too many people are breaking the law on a daily basis without any regards for their actions, while the music and record industries are falling horribly. There are many different solutions and remedies to the problem at hand.

The first solution for this problem includes a new way for people to download music for free, while record companies and artists get the pay they deserve. People want free, unlimited music downloads. Allan Klepfisz, the founder and executive chairman of the Qtrax program claims that Qtrax goes about this problem in another way; through advertising within their program, which allows for users to have free and unlimited high-quality music downloads (Lauria). Basically, Klepfisz is explaining that this program could solve our problems by allowing people to continue downloading music for free, while artists and record companies still get the credit and pay they deserve.

Klepfisz is more interested in helping everyone download music legally and help artists make the money they deserve rather than making money for himself, so he introduced his Qtrax program to the world. Since Qtrax is advertisement-supported, he manages to achieve all of his goals. According to Peter Lauria, a writer for the New York Post, Qtrax already has the support of the four major record labels (Top labels back). This means that Qtrax could quickly expand, and money could be distributed to artists and record companies quickly, because it is already supported by the record labels which distribute legal music. This program would effect the entire music industry if its full advantage was met. If more people were to use this service instead of completely free programs which are not supported by advertisements, artists and record companies would finally get the pay and credit that they deserve.

Another solution to this huge problem in the music industry is to focus on the primary group of people downloading illegal copyrighted files; college students. Laura Mead, a student at Northern Michigan University writes that the Director of Technical Services at Northern Michigan University has put a program into place which will revoke Internet access privileges to students illegally obtaining copyrighted files (Illegal downloading continues). In other words, the Director of Technical Services will make sure that no one who will illegally download music will have Internet access.

This would immediately affect a great population of the school, because a great majority of the school downloads music. Jim Factor, a computer science professor at Marquette University, states, "It's going to make them aware that certain things that they may do on the Internet could have negative consequences" (Kleefeld). Factor's point is that once students are caught downloading illegal files, they will see what they are doing as wrong and consequential, which will cause them to stop downloading illegal files completely. If the whole school is able to learn that downloading music is wrong, then there will be far fewer downloads. If this system could be successfully put into place at all of the major universities world wide, then the illegal downloading of copyrighted files would decline exponentially.

Of the proposed solutions, the best solution to the expansive use of illegal downloading programs and a decline in the music industry is to put programs such as Qtrax into place, because these programs allow for music artists and record companies to get paid for their work, does not violate copyright laws, and will allow people to continue downloading media files for free. Eliot Van Buskirk, an experienced writer for the wired blog network specializing in social media articles, states, "To get the industry on board with P2P, Qtrax will sign over "the lion's share of revenue" to labels and publishers, paying out on per-download and per-play bases" (Qtrax claims major).

What Buskirk is saying, is that the music industry is going to making the mass majority of the money being made from this program, meaning that the music industry will finally stop falling at such a drastic rate. Buskirk also states, "Assuming that QTrax can untangle its licensing situation, it will offer a socially-driven music source for the 94 percent of internet users Klepfisz says do not and will not pay for music online" (Qtrax claims major). The essence of Buskirk's statement is that there is a huge population of users of the Internet who would like to download music for free, and people would be driven to programs like this that offer an incentive for downloading free media files. This is by far the best solution because it covers all factors of the problem.

The placing of programs such as Qtrax into society far outweighs the benefits of other proposed solution to the problem with illegal downloads in the music industry. The other proposed solution calls for users of illegal fire sharing programs to have a sense of morals, and to realize that what they are doing is wrong. According to another survey at Northern Michigan University in the last year, 67% of all college students are not concerned with the issue of illegal downloading and file sharing (Mead). Since the vast majority of people downloading files are not even concerned about the fact that what they are doing is immoral, it is going to be extremely difficult to expect this group of people to stop based on decency.

David Pogue, technology writer for the New York Times, states to the public, "You want a movie or an album. You don't want to pay for it. So you download it. Who thinks that might be wrong?" (Ernesto). During this experiment, only two hands out of the 500 people in the audience raised their hands. Less than a percent of the entire audience thought that stealing media files and breaking United States copyright laws was wrong. People cannot be expected to perform based on morality or good will, people expect some sort of reward for their actions. Qtrax does just this. It is a legal program, it provides their favorite artists with support as well as gives them credit, and people can download all they want for free. The only solution to this problem is to give people an incentive to stop breaking the law, and the placement of Qtrax and similar programs is the only way to complete this objective.

In conclusion, it has been established that the only way to provide a solution to this problem is to understand that people need an incentive to stop illegally downloading files. Placing programs which are advertisement-supported will do just that because they provide artists and record companies with support, give people the credit they deserve, allows users to download unlimited media files for free, and do not violate copyright laws. To get involved, people need to stop downloading files to begin with, and start using legal programs. The only way to stop people from downloading files illegally is to give them their alternatives, which have now been introduced to us as advertisement-supported programs. Do not be one of the people who finds their selves in trouble with the law because of illegal downloads; simply revert to a legal way of downloading music for free!

SOURCES

Buskirk Eliot. "Qtrax claims major labels are onboard with p2p music sharing." Wired Blog Network. 26 Jan. 2008. Codenet, Inc. 17 Feb. 2008 .

Ernesto, Jones. "Piracy, morals and the need for change." Torrent Freak. 23 Dec. 2007. 17 Feb. 2008 .

Kleefeld, Eric. "Marquette targets illegal downloading." Wise Technology. 9 Sep. 2005. 5 Feb. 2008 .

Lauria, Peter. "Top labels back Qtrax swap service." New York Post. 25 Jun. 2007. NYP Holdings, Inc. 17 Feb. 2008 .

Mead, Laura. "Illegal downloading continues unabated." The North Wind Online. 4 Apr. 2007. Northern Michigan University. 6 Feb. 2008 .