Music Piracy; Should it Be Allowed?

Through out history, when you give people access to something, they will consume, and some of those people will, in fact, buy. For this reason, in my opinion, music piracy should be allowed. Also, it’s known that anti-piracy stifles creativity and economic growth worldwide. My claims are supported by a recent study on moral standards, that is published by the RFRU (Rockwool Foundation Research Unit), and it reveals that more than 70% of the public find piracy socially acceptable, which is a main part of why the average iPod would contain pirated music worthy of $800.. This says a lot about the impossibility of stopping music piracy from spreading amongst the youths of this generation. Furthermore, corporations will have to outlaw anything that can record anything to get what they want, and we all know that isn’t going to happen.. Big corprations and record companies should ask themselves this question: is it better to charge for music and probably limit your audience, or embrace all the ways music can spread, without permission or remuneration? So, they might as well just live with it. 

Without the consent of the composer, the recording artist, or the copyright-holding record company, copying and distributing a piece of music is considered piracy, which is a kind of copyright infringement, and is punishable by law in different countries around the world. Stemming from this, as more and more people are committing this so-called “crime”, and choosing to download music online for free rather than paying for it, governments are imposing fines and punishments, such as jail time, which are quite inappropriate and unreasonable over such a minor offense. Imprisonment in high levels shall lead to overcrowding government-funded jails, all just for the sake of private companies that shape no mention-worthy influence over the true core of economy. The money losses won’t be amended easily, because the labor forces themselves would be too busy imprisoned. 

Further to this, 95% of the music downloaded online is illegal, and evil corprate-heads hate it. And according to the Vlog Brother and New York Times' best selling author, John Green, this makes them want to control the internet, and the government can’t help but do anything and screw it up. Copyright law is important, but constricting the freedom of the people from creative platforms, such as YouTube and Tumblr, is not the way to do it. They want to create a system whereby any website on the internet could be turned off at a moment’s notice. And if they can do it, they will. Websites will be so afraid of this new power that they will not wait to be censored, they will censor themselves, stifling the culture of creation that has become so powerful on the internet.

In addition, the governments will never be able to keep up with the people who want to infringe on copyright, but they will be able to track down and stomp out casual users who want to listen to songs, and have a good old jolly time, so they’ll do a great job of scaring legitimate users while missing the real violators, who have enough expertise and free time to get around whatever blocks the government puts in place. 

What are the losses of production and distribution companies? .. Well, according to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America),there are two categories of losses to consider..
1- losses from street piracy
2-losses from online piracy. 

To put it in numbers, according to studies by Yale, global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, and a loss of $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings.. With all these calculations in hand, measuring the real effect of piracy on music sales remains difficult to assess. The participants in the digital market do not always follow the rules of classical economics, so their moves are quite hard to predict. But still, who is to actually measure these losses? You can’t lose money that you never won nor had. All of these predictions that are put are build on old beliefs and techniques.. The future that we’ve been waiting for is here.. It’s today, and these recording companies have to evolve with the system. When they try to hold back by adding censorship to the internet and using strict copyright laws so everything else works to their way, they are going to get crushed. 

In general, problems like regional restrictions are an indicative that the broadcasters are not meeting demand for a segment of the population. Denying someone their rights and income from an intellectual property is wrong, but the providers must understand the positions of the clients, and they must also realize the intensity of serving such wide ranges of people, and they should alway expect the worst.. 

For more on this debatable matter, we will consider some of the many situations consumers find themselves in… Let’s take China for example, many people illegally download music, because they cannot afford to purchase legitimate authorized copies. This is not, in anyway, an indication of the Chinese’ people willingness to pay for the music they love and enjoy so much, nor does it reveal anything about their intentions, except that they, currently, cannot afford to support their favorite artists. But on the other hand, in other places, we find people going to the stores, buying legal physical CDies, owning collections of their favorite music, which they happily paid for, just because they can. 

To sum up, trying to stop music piracy is idiotic, this doesn't mean that intellectual property doesn't deserve to be respected, but forcing impossible ideals is not the right way to compensate it.. So, corporations must learn how to boost profit from free advertisement, and give in to the world we live in. Stating punishments won’t do the economy any good, only good thinking will.

References:

* Forbes (Mar. 25, 2013). Music Piracy: Major Studies Conflicted Over Recording Industry Impact by Michele Catalano.

*Torrent Freak (Feb. 28, 2011). 70% of the Public Finds Piracy Socially Acceptable.

* Yale Law & Technology Watch (Feb. 22, 2011). Envisional Estimates Infringing Use.

* TIME Magazine (May 24, 2007). The Battle Over Music Piracy by Lev Grossman.

 - May 3rd, 2013.