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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
TASTING ROOM - "Copyright and Music Downloading"
(editors note - I'm going to be throwing up some of my work on here to give readers an idea of my writing style and ability. Some of these are older in my portfolio, some are new, each post like this will have TASTING ROOM in the header as an FYI)
For the last several years a battle has raged over copyright on the Internet. The two sides remain firm to their beliefs on what’s right. The music industry and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are stood poised to take down any Internet user who tries to copy or distribute copyrighted material without authorization. They claim that’s its stealing from the artists and those who sell their work. On the other side are those who download the music and illegally copy the songs onto CDs. This group claims that they’re doing nothing wrong, it’s the industry’s fault for keeping CD prices so high. They also claim that there isn’t enough good music on albums to suffice purchasing a full CD. Both groups have good points, but the industry claims laws are being disregarded.
The RIAA is a strong opponent of allowing the copyright piracy to continue. They make reference to the various copyright laws in place to prevent such disregard. In 1787 James Madison suggested that the Constitution should include a law “to secure to literary authors their copyrights for a limited time” (RIAA, 1). It was passed unanimously, even before freedom of speech was discussed. The actual provision said, “The congress shall have power... to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries...” (RIAA, 1). Of course this law would have to be updated upon the arrival of the Internet and many other technologies.
In 1992, congress passed a law that would exempt consumers from being prosecuted for copyright violations when they recorded music for noncommercial, private use. This law was the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA). It also called for small payments of royalties to artists and songwriters for this privilege (RIAA, 1).. But the Internet allowed digital music to be copied easily, and distributed.
In 1995 the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act was passed. This law gave copyrighted artists the right to authorize digital transmission of their works. This included sharing through interactive audio transmissions. It also called for the requirement of royalties for certain methods of use (RIAA). But people were still getting music for free.
To alleviate all future copyright infringement over the Internet, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was created in 1998. This law had many provisions for various offences. It prohibited future production of devices that were designed solely for bypassing technology that protects copyrighted material. The law described the responsibilities of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in cases online infringement. The law stated that an ISP must act to remove infringing content that it is aware of, or face liabilities for resulting damages caused (RIAA, 1). This law clearly defined what the RIAA had been trying to achieve throughout the 1990’s. The RIAA and the music industry had many reasons for pushing for such laws to be passed.
There are many people that the RIAA believes suffer from the copyright infringement of downloading music and illegally burning it to CD. One of these groups is obvious; it’s the music industry. Record sales have gone down 10% in the last year (Steal, 1). They haven’t said if this was because of the Internet, though. Each year the music industry loses around 4.2 billion dollars to piracy all over the world. About 85% of recordings never get enough money to cover their costs in getting their music out. They depend mostly on the 15% of recordings that are profitable to cover the lost profit from the less desirable ones. The artists lose much as well. They don’t get their rightly earned royalties, which provide them with money to live. The piracy makes breaking through to the mainstream of popular music much tougher, and makes surviving through the scene even more difficult than usual (RIAA, 2). The RIAA claims many more are hurt than them though.
According to the RIAA, consumers are also hurt by piracy. The pirates force up CD prices so everyone suffers. But who gets hurt the worst are the small retailers that sell the recordings. They can’t compete with “free” (Piracy, 1). The less stores that stay open causes fewer jobs that could be filled by the very people that are stealing the music (RIAA, 2). To the “pirates” of music, this is all false. They claim that the industry is complaining over nothing, and what they are doing is perfectly legal.
The problem the RIAA had was to prove that what these “pirates” are doing is illegal because they have gone about it very cleverly. Peer to peer sharing is the center of this issue. This method of downloading music has crippled several offenses of the RIAA. Peer to peer sharing differs from directly stealing music off the Internet because it eliminated the need for a central index server. What this means is that people aren’t downloading from a certain site, they’re getting it from each other. The programs used, search out certain materials from the other users on the program. This makes these programs hard to shutdown because there’s almost no single way to target them and stop all use (Stuff, 1). The most infamous of these programs was Napster, a peer to peer program that started all the controversy.
Napster was created to make downloading faster and more convenient. This program made it possible to talk to other users and find any music file that a user took time to convert to a mp3, a digital format capable of being burned to a CD. By the time Napster was shutdown by a court order, there were over 80 million registered users. How did this happen? The ease of Napster spread through word of mouth. College kids were enthralled with how easy it was to get entire CDs. By the time enough people had the program, the number of files swapped reached the billions (Day, 1) When the RIAA decided to interfere they only made it worse.
When the RIAA served Napster with a copyright infringement case in December of 1999, Napster became common knowledge to all those who hadn’t already heard of it (Day, 1). Over the next nine months Napster gained over 20 million more users, based on the RIAA bringing the case to the media. Songs swapped would reach over 14,000 a minute (CNN, 1). When Napster was targeted for destruction the peer to peer swappers rebelled. In early 2000, AOL’s Justin Frankel released Gnutella, a new peer to peer program. The programming code for peer to peer trading was now out. Anyone with the right programming skill could create a Napster copycat. Even if Napster was to shut down, file swapping was now a permanent part of the Internet (Day, 1). The RIAA focused on taking Napster down, no matter the cost, to make an example of the new startups springing up everywhere.
As the RIAA brought up its various occurrences of piracy by Napster, the executives of Napster fought back with theirs. The defense claimed that they were not breaking any laws. They first cited the 1980 case of Betamax v. the MPAA. In the case the Motion Picture Association of America sued Betamax for creating a VCR that could record of television. The court ruled in favor of Betamax, claiming that VCR’s had other legal uses. Consumers that created private copies for their own use was perfectly legal. Napster compared their program to the case, saying that their users were only downloading for private use. They also claimed that the program was simply a “director” of music. They weren’t responsible for how the materials were employed by their users (CNET, 1). The courts were not convinced, and Napster was killed in May of 2002. But there are still many programs boasting thousands of users. Many of the users are refusing to acknowledge the copyright laws the RIAA insists they’re breaking. The users are convinced the record companies are to blame.
Many consumers say the RIAA went about the situation completely wrong. The executives of Napster claimed that their program was helpful to the recording industry. They said the program had endless possibilities for the marketing and promotion of music (CNET, 1). The manager of the small town record store Vintage Vinyl stated that shutting down Napster was the worst thing the music industry could have done:
Napster was a very centralized, controlled environment. You could track everything that was going on, because 95% of all the downloading was going on in one place. Then they made Napster the villain, and everyone (other websites) who came along had to be more guerilla about it. Now it’s harder to track down who’s downloading what and where the information’s going. It was the best promotional source for music I’ve ever seen, a place where people could go if they wanted to hear what a group sounded like and decide if they wanted to buy it...(Post, f1).
Many other small business owners agree with Pick, even after the RIAA claimed the smaller companies were hit the hardest. They could have helped everyone out by developing a strategy to market their music with Napster. The most ironic fact is that the music industry was the first to profit from digital music after CDs were created. The problem they overlooked is since CDs are digital they are easy to make perfect copies of. But to make matters worse, CDs are now more expensive than they were in 1986. No other technology has ever gotten more expensive as time went on. CDs only cost a few cents to make, yet sixty blank ones cost as much as a regularly recorded one (Legal, 53). So what are the consumers who claim that CD prices are too high to do to get their music? Napster taught everyone that the music industry is too slow to respond to consumer demand and new technologies for new ways to bring music to the population (Steal, 1). Consumers will continue to download music until they receive either cheaper CD prices or a cheaper, legal way to get their music.
This debate has raged on for the last few years since Napster was shutdown, now there’s so many programs for file swapping that it’s almost impossible to get caught. Some of the programs are even swapping movies and software. I have mixed feelings about this issue because both sides have valid points. I do believe, however, that no settlement will be reached until the music industry moves to make a compromise. The key complaint of consumers is the price of CDs. They say that there aren’t enough quality songs on most CDs today to necessitate buying a full album. Why should they dump twenty bucks for two songs? The key evidence is that CDs are now more expensive than when they were originally produced. Why empty our pockets when we could get the songs we want for our own use?
I don’t condone mass producing pirated CDs. I believe it’s ok to burn CDs for personal use, only because of today’s prices. If they were to drop then I would buy CDs constantly. I have a library of over four hundred CDs about thirty or so are burned. But after I burn a CD and like the material, I often go and buy it because the original always sounds better then a converted mp3. The packaging and CD booklet are essential to a real music fan as well. I would never burn CDs of small, independent artist unless their music is hard to find. Even in those cases, I will often burn a CD of their songs mixed up to last me until I can get a copy.
There is no way to stop people from stealing music over the Internet; it’s too easy and way too unorganized to bring down. I’d suggest the industry listen to people such as Steve Pick and think about reviving Napster for marketing and promotional use. There are so many musicians out there that don’t get proper exposure. The Internet is the best tool of communication since the television. It allows mainstream music to be followed as well as underground and independent. But even this controversy will continue on until CD prices fall.
The controversy between the music “pirates” of cyberspace and the music industry has continued into the new millenium. Both sides seem to be relentless in their beliefs and decisions, but neither side is winning. The music industry loses billions each year and the consumers are losing by having to steal music to listen to it. The answer is simple, drop CD prices or form a compromise and consumers will once again flood into the record stores.
References
Anderson, Steve. “How Piracy, Culture, and High Tech Hackers Brought the Recording
Industry to its Knees.” Corporate Legal Times. Nov 2002. Page 53.
Borland, John. “Napster: Downloading Music for Free is Legal.” 3 July 2000. CNET. 27 Feb 2003. www.news.com.com/2100-1023-242742.html?legacy=cnet.
“Copyright Laws.” 2000. RIAA. 20 Feb 2003. www.riaa.org/copyright-laws-4.cfm
“Copy What?” 2000. RIAA. 20 Feb 2003. www.riaa.org/copy-what.cfm
Goodlatte, Bob. “Stealing Entertainment.” 27 May 2002 Washington Times. 27 Feb 2003. www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020527-69226552.htm
“How Napster Worked.” 2002. HSW Media Network. 27 Feb 2003. Howstuffworks.com/napster4.htm.
Johnson, Kevin. “The Music Industry Blames Downloaders for Slumping Sales, Downloaders Blame Record Labels For Lousy Music. Nobody’s Happy, and Everyone’s Doing a Slow Burn.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 2 Feb 2003. Page F1.
King, Brad. “The Day the Napster Died.” 15 May 2002. Wired News. 27 Feb 2003. www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,52540,00.html.
Lefevre, Greg. “Federal Judge Rules Against Napster.” 26 July 2000. CNN. 27 Feb 2003. www.literacy.org/cnnsf/mapster/story.html.
“Protect Copyright Campaign.” 2000. RIAA. 20 Feb 2003. www.riaa.org/protect-campaign-1cfm.
Towns, Ed. “Piracy Hurts Everyone Both Online and Offline.” 22 May 2002. The Hill. 27 Feb 2003. www.thehill.com/052202/ss_towns.shtm.
Good Sites For Flow Advice
Lately, I've been scanning the internets for some good advice on starting up freelance writing properly. I've found that I'm about the one billionth person to try and do this, especially in this fantastic economic situation we've found ourselves in. Luckily, at the moment, I'm not stuck doing this full time. The job boards seem slim these days, with even more hands held out.
Well, here's a plethora of resources for all. I'm going to post a list of links on the site with most of these to help those in need of advice anytime.
http://inkwelleditorial.com - probably one of the best, has tons of articles on freelancing
www.freelancewritinggigs.com - I found my first freelance writing job on this site. The woman Deb who runs it is very knowledgeable and always posts some good jobs and articles, including this amazing one -
http://www.freelancewriting.com/ - lots of good stuff here
http://freelancewrite.about.com/ -about.com's site on freelancing
http://www.yudkin.com/flfaq.htm - kinda a 101 type site
http://www.chrisblogging.com/ - blog from freelancer who loves to write There's a ton of links within these sites that can help....
Associated Flow?
So I just got into working with Associated Content. If you haven't heard of it, they basically pay you upfront for articles and then pay you based on page views. While the actual money isn't huge at first, if you work it right you can make some big bank. I just submitted like 10 of my old articles just to see what happens. We'll see i guess. More info on it below, with some tidbits and such....
Here's a good article about it -http://writing4ac.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-associated-content-worth-it.html
and of course the place itself - http://www.associatedcontent.com
Welcome to the Flow
Hi, my name's Ryan Abeling, though most people call me Abe, and I've decided to start this blog in response to my blossoming career in freelance writing. Being a work at home editor, writer, musician, and producer has allowed me some time to pursue more of a writing career, so I'm using this to point me out, build a portfolio that's a bit more thorough, and save a few bucks on hosting. Thanks again GoDaddy for raising your rates.
Anyways, I'll be adding a lot of stuff here over the next few weeks, on writing, my work, and maybe a bit of music and local life as well. I'm two months into living here in Portland, OR, the 2nd most unemployed state in the union, and it's just amazing. Last night I met a new singer that I'm hoping will lead to a decent working relationship. We'll see.
That's it for the moment...Stay tuned...
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