Piracy Of Music And Videos From The Internet: A Double-Edged Sword

Impact of Piracy on Music and Video Industry

Discuss about the Abolition of Legal Restrictions on Downloading Media from the Internet.

The Internet is a rapid developing platform, which provides millions of services to different people. The facilities provided by the internet is becoming popular and hence is accessible to everyone. Music or video piracy is defined as the copying of the data and then distributing the media on the public platform (Wang, Yeh and Liao 2013). With the advent of the internet and other forms of digital media, the piracy has gained a new form. The newer form of technology within the internet has made the process of piracy to be much more complicated. The web-based users initiated the addition of different kinds of media files on the internet platform. The potential risks related to the pirating of music had to be eliminated (Appleyard 2015). The piracy of music and videos from the internet leads to copyright infringement, which is a crime and thus it leads to huge losses for any company who publishes their media on the internet. In order to restrict the illegal downloading of music and videos from the internet, different government of different countries have made stringent laws in order to restrict the piracy of these forms of online media. 

The protection of Intellectual Property has become a huge matter of concern in the recent times (Bently and Sherman 2014). The holders of the copyright claim that the illegal downloading of online media is a form of theft and thus the people who perform these kind of activities should be severely punished. Illegal downloading of any form of media from the internet leads to copyright infringement. It is defined as a form of practice of using those kind of works, which are primarily protected by the laws of copyright (Cammaerts, Meng and Mansell 2013).

With the growing use of the internet, many users have several forms of access to materials that are protected by the laws of copyright. These media have become available on a wide basis and could be downloaded illegally with the help of peer-to-peer (P2P) programs for sharing of files, applications and networks (Hamari, Sjoklint and Ukkonen 2016). The enforcement of strict form of laws has brought the entire situation into control. 

Although the piracy of music and videos from the internet is considered to illegal, yet it has brought about some major issues for some of the users (Aguiar and Martens 2016). The usage of internet and downloading information is not only limited to some basic users but they also include students from schools and colleges from all over the world. The internet has made an easy way for its users to exchange information, download several forms of media, without the need to reach to a store in order to purchase a physical CD. Due to the recent piracy related issues, which are affecting some of the owners of these media, the convenience of downloading the online media is being affected. User need to pay a certain amount of money in order to avail the facilities. One of the basic reasons for the piracy of music and video is that consumers do not want to pay for the media, which could be downloaded for free (Peukart, CLaussen and Kretschmer 2017). People often tend to enjoy such kind of services, when the accessibility to use them is simplified. Legal restrictions on the downloading of such kind of media could be the cause of a major issue for students. They would need to access such kinds of media, which could be useful for their educational purposes. Hence the legal restrictions on these kinds of media could be an issue for some of them because many of the student cannot afford to pay for all kinds of media (DeNardis and Hackl 2015).

Legal Issues Pertaining to Piracy of Music and Videos

The prohibition on the downloading of different forms of media would truncate the access to people for downloading the free form of entertainment and educational purposes (Dejean and Suire 2014). The legal based restrictions on the downloading of music and video from the internet should not be considered as illegal. The artists and the concerned labels have plenty of opportunity to make money as they perform concerts all over the world. As the society is progressing at a fast pace, the laws related to downloading content from the internet should also be made to obsolete. In reality, the downloading of such kinds of content means that the person is using the file without the intention of stealing. Downloading of content such as music and video would open a new world to the field of music (Vinerean et al. 2013). This would increase a wide likelihood that the audience would listen to the songs of the artists.

Downloading online form of media could not be considered as stealing. It could be considered as a copy of the original product. Hence, downloading the same file could be considered as the same as stealing a physical product such as a CD. The different bands who wish to sell their music on the online platform should take into consideration some of the issues. They should provide a free sample of their songs to the targeted audience and if in case, the audience would get hooked to their music, then they should make a provision for purchasing the entire album (Kemp and White 2013). The audience might also wish to go and watch the music concert of the same band. This kind of marketing strategy would not only be beneficial for the band but also it would help in the promotion of the band. The band should also focus on the fact of making money by performing in various concerts and other forms of merchandise. 

In the recent times, the software used for the development of music has become too much expensive. The music CDs and the Movie DVDs have also shown a huge growth in terms of money. The process and techniques for digitally recording the music have helped in reducing the money, which would be needed in order to record a CD. The costs for the production of the music, packaging of the CDs and the delivery of the CDs to the music stores have also reduced (Duan et al. 2014). In addition to this, many of the albums are not worth for buying. The value for spending money on buying a decent album from a store is not there. Moreover, in the recent times, people do not have the minimum time to visit a store and purchase a CD. Hence the people opt for various online platforms in order to satisfy their needs. Many people who had the habit of collecting CDs have accepted the fact that downloading music from the internet is an easy option as they spend most of their time with their phones. Hence, they do not have some extra time to purchase a CD and then listen to their favorite music. Even many of the insiders from within the music industry have also claimed the fact that the music CDs, which are available from the store have seen a huge rise in the prices (Barker and Maloney 2015).

Moral and Ethical Justifications Behind Free Content

There is also one reason behind the need for the abolition of the legal rights based on downloading the media from the internet. Many of the music albums or videos are not readily available in the real-time environment. They are firstly uploaded on the internet for the purpose of promotion. The users would then have to wait for a prolonged time in order to get a copy of their favorite media. Users have gained knowledge of the fact that the digital form of media is very easily accessible and requires a very less effort for listening to their favorite content. Moreover, with the advent of new form of technology, there is an extremely high chance that the music CDs would become obsolete after a certain period of time. With the rise in the field of internet, users choose to store their information on the cloud platform. The CDs might tend to get damaged due to overuse in the long period of run. Hence, people have chosen the online platform in order to store their files on their cloud based platform and thus they would listen to their music when they would feel the need (Dinh et al. 2013). Moreover, the option for purchasing a CD cannot be the best option because people cannot listen to music from a CD if they are on their way to their workplace. Hence, there is a high need that downloading of the content should be made free of cost or at a minimal price such that people would be able to download their favorite content whenever they would wish to do the same. 

The new artists who wish to establish themselves to a wider audience should provide free content to the audience in order to gain attention from them. The audience mainly get attracted to those forms of content, which would be made available to them on a free basis. The newly formed music bands would have to make investments at the beginning in order to establish themselves and thus make a stand within the international market. Hence, the free content could be considered as a viable option in order to spread to a wide group of audience.  

Purchasing music from the store is not a viable option as because some of the music in the recent times are not even available in the store after a certain band releases their album (Regner 2015). They are instead published on the online platforms for different users for their benefit. The people can then listen to their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. They can also store the music files in the cloud platform. This would reduce the amount of space on their devices. Hence, this would be a convenient option for many people who are not able to afford the amount of money, which would be needed in order to download any form of music or video. There are also some brands on the internet who charge a ransom amount in order to download a certain, which would contain a few songs. This is not affordable for someone who used to download music based on a free platform. Students also sometimes need to view certain websites, which contains study materials based on educational videos. These websites might charge them a huge amount of money in order to view the video, which would not be a convenient form of option. Students would always prefer to choose those websites, which would be cheap or the contents within them are absolutely free of cost (Gikas and Grant 2013). Hence the charge that would be collected from them would be the worst option. In such cases, the website should provide free content that would be convenient for them.

Why the Availability of Free Media is Essential for Artists and Students

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that although the downloading of certain music and videos from the internet is a crime, but still there must be certain kinds of content, which should be made to be available at free of cost. Intellectual property, which concerns any kind of art form is not fully justified. This is because of the fact that each individual must have the basic right to gain access to the art and culture. Hence, freely available content should be made available to every individual. Downloading of freely available files would be helpful in enabling much more benefits. This would benefit the artists as they would get the best option for promoting and advertising their talent to a wide range of audience. With the help of this form of advertisement, the people would like to avail this kind of facility and thus this would help in the promotion of the band. Although various kind of legal based restrictions have been set by the government of different countries, but still these form of policies is needed to be revised. Hence, the downloading of free media content should be made legal in order to provide benefits for a large audience. 

References

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Bently, L. and Sherman, B., 2014. Intellectual property law. Oxford University Press, USA.

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