The Sharman Co., the makers of the popular file sharing program "Kazaa" was ordered by a judge to pay 100 million dollars in damages to the recording industry yesterday. Are you for, or against the free downloading of music. Why or why not?
2006-07-27 01:40:36 · 4 answers · asked by Mongo 2 in Entertainment & Music ➔ Music
I can see both sides of the issue.
On one hand, you have money hungry labels who put out lots of manufactured crap and expect you to pay for it. They spend so much money on promotion that they think image defeats content. I've heard they pay radio stations to play their stuff.
There's also the whole argument of what intellectual property means in a digital society. When you buy a download online, just what exactly are you buying? Are you allowed to make copies of it? What if you lose all your data, does that mean you lose your entire collection? The record company thinks of mp3's as physical records but they're two entirely different things. A record you can hold and store, and it used to be difficult to make copies of it unless you were some recordshining bootlegger. Mp3's are information, and they're not physical. They may be stored on physical hard drives, but the hard drive itself is not the mp3. That's where the lines get fuzzy about what copyright really means.
Then on the other hand, record companies are in the business to make money and if they can't sell their music because everyone is copying it and giving it to each other, they will go broke. No one has any reason to buy albums if they can just have someone give it to them for free online. It's certainly easier to download something then go to a store and pay for it. Therefore, everyone in the record business (including the artist) gets hurt because there's no money to pay their fees and salaries. If the artist wants to make money from recordings of their music, how can they expect anyone to purchase their music unless there's no one to give that music away?
The record companies can sue individuals for copying music and giving it to others. However, can they sue the networks which provide the framework through which individuals trade music? The networks themselves are not copying and selling/giving away the music, why are they accountable for what their users do? If someone is a childpornographer, should their Internet Service Provider be held responsible for what the child pornographer does on the internet? They can't predict what their users are going to do. With this same logic, how then can Kazaa or other networks be sued for the service they provide? Would they have to employ thought police to sift through everything their users do to make sure they're not being illegal?
The whole issue is strange to me and I can't decide who is right and who is wrong. Personally, I don't think the record labels own the mp3's. They own the physical albums they release their songs on.
2006-07-27 02:09:47 · answer #1 · answered by Justin 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I am 'pro.' I don't see what the deal is with downloading free music. I remember when you would do this via the radio and pressing the record button on a cassette player, an ancient method. You also did this with a 'dual cassette player' and you'd borrow your friends cassette and 'dub' the music. They make millions upon millions of dollars in the music industry. So do authors for that matter - and for some reason, it's lawful to have libraries where you can read the book for free! I don't think a peon like me downloading a few songs could possibly cause them to lose money. I'm not altering their song which would be a copyright violation. To me, it's just a case of the rich getting richer.
2006-07-27 08:46:38 · answer #2 · answered by spolie 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Kazaa will declare bankruptcy. Copyrighted material should not be free. Copyrights should expire after a reasonable length of time after the release of the material. Copyrights should be extended by re-releasing the material. Expired copyrighted material that is not currently being published and is not available to the public should become public domain and if someone makes it available the provider should be allowed to recover costs associated with providing it. Let the market forces rule. Greed is a motivator.
2006-07-27 17:59:09 · answer #3 · answered by Paul K 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Against. It's copyright theft, pure and simple.
2006-07-27 08:42:58 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋