Are MP3’s a breakthrough in technology or are they just another bomb waitingto explode on us? Many people say they are good, while others say they are notjust bad, but horrifying to musicians that want to make it to the top. MP3’sare widely used by teenagers on their computers usually illegally, and theirdistributors are constantly being threatened by the producers of the music.Millions of dollars are being lost due to the Internet craze of the MP3technology.
This is mainly because fewer people are buying the legal music fromrecord stores. Now that the problem is here, Internet police are on the loose tofind these illegal distributors of music and put them to a stop. MP3’s arehighly compressed, CD-quality, sound files. The MP3 has become the most commonlyused unofficial file format, which is downloadable from the Internet.
The onlyrequirement you need to play an MP3 is a program like Winamp (found atwww.winamp.com) or Microsoft Windows Media Player. The Internet allows users todownload songs (in MP3 format) in a matter of minutes without paying any money.This compressed MP3 technology is popping up everywhere on the Internet.
Thereis almost no music site that you can go to where an MP3 of some sort is notbeing offered. All you have to do is login and download. MP3’s are breakingcopyright laws and are a part of online piracy. Online piracy is playing, ordownloading, songs and lyrics without authorization and without paying tributeto the artists, on the Internet.
Downloading even one song without permission isconsidered online piracy. When people download MP3’s from the Internet, theychoose to ignore the copyright laws because the disclaimers are all written infont sizes under 10pts at the bottom of the page. If people stop going to thesite, the site stops making money. All things that might make the user leave thesite are hidden.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has twocopyrights that apply to MP3’s. 1. Copyright in musical work Lyrics andmusical notes as they’re written on paper. The songwriter or music publishertypically owns this copyright. 2.
Copyright in the sound recording Which is arecording of a performer singing or playing the particular song. The recordcompany usually owns this copyright. Therefore, the only legal way to copy,download, and upload an MP3 is to get permission, from the artist, which everyuser either forgets to do, or doesn’t even bother. This is the primary causefor the war of legal rights that goes on today, because free is good right?Wrong! Having free MP3’s on the Internet creates a problem. The problem isthat millions and millions of dollars are lost everyday to all of the musiciansthat make the music possible. The Canadian Recording Industry Associationreported that there are around 80,000 infringing MP3 sites on the Internet andeach one is carrying around 300 or more recordings each.
That means that thereare around 24 million songs that are illegally on the Internet. Major money isbeing lost here. The RIAA also calculated that there are 120 million downloadsfrom MP3 sites weekly and climbing, representing an annual loss of $5 billion(US) to the recording industry and around $1 million a day in the United Statesalone. The recording industry is going crazy trying to fix this problem.
BrianRobertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association spoke at aconference and said “There are tens of thousands of sound recordings that arebasically sitting around in a virtual record store with the door wide open andeveryone is helping themselves” and concluded by saying “Everyone usingMP3’s feels they have the inalienable right to use the product”. Because ofan increase in hard drive capacity, users cannot only trade individual songs,but full albums too. This makes matters even worse because people just get whatis called a CD-Burner and writes the MP3’s onto a CD so they can now listen toMP3’s on any audio CD player. People could also get what is called an MP3player. An MP3 player is a small portable device that stores and plays MP3’s.
An example of one of these is a NOMAD Player (made by Creative). The users ofMP3’s are having their fun now, but how long will this adventure last? Howlong will recording companies and artists allow money fall out of their pocketsby some little teenager who has no clue about the copyrights or laws he/she isbreaking? Not very long it seems. More and more companies are teaming uptogether to fight MP3’s. The 5 biggest global music and entertainmentcompanies (Time Warner Inc., EMI, Sony, Seagram and Bertelsmann) have hooked upwith big computer businesses like IBM to try to control the music distributionover the Internet. According to Market Tracker International, legalInternet-related music sales rose to $147 million from $29 million in 1997.
Thisshows that companies can use the Internet as an advantage. Companies need to usemarketing techniques to lure users into their sites to actually pay for musiceven though the net is filled with illegal web sites distributing the productfor free. Vorton Corp., for example, lures up to 50,000 visitors a day just forselling CD’s at reasonable prices. The number of sales for Vorton Corp.increases as the illegal downloads decrease.
Organizations, all over the web,have full-time employees surfing the Internet all day looking for offending MP3sites. Artists and recording companies are losing the money they should makefrom their hard and creative work because of illegal downloading of MP3’s. Thebattle is just beginning. People need to know that even though it is easy to getMP3 files for free. They are creating the artists and the recording companies,and are breaking the law.
Although MP3 files seem like a friend, they are reallyeveryone’s foe.
