Since the appearance of MP3, we have downloaded our favorite music for free or small fees.
We have conducted illegal activities because those MP3 files sharing ignore permission from copyright owner.
According to the music industry, those illegal MP3 file sharing are root cause of declining of CD sales. However, some study shows that “Internet music piracy is not responsible for declining CD sales; at most, file sharing can explain a tiny fraction of decline of sales.”
According to Felix Oberholzer-Gee at Harvard Business School in Massachusetts and Koleman Strumpf at the University of North Carolina, data based on the most actively downloaded songs show there is no correlation between sales of those CD and number of downloaded songs. Surprisingly, “albums that sold more than 600,000 copies during this period appeared to sell better when downloaded more heavily.” In addition, people who conduct illegal music file sharing tend to spend more money on purchasing music because they are interested in music.
In my opinion, although those MP3 file sharing may decrease sales of CD, there are many benefits for music industry. For instance, although music file sharing is harmful to big music company like Sony Music, we can’t ignore increasing number sales of audio devises. Customers tend to buy more audio device such as mp3 players when it is easy and cheap to download music. In contrast, if the cost of music is expensive, sales of music devices will decline. Therefore, there is tradeoff between sales of CD and sales of music devices.
In addition, as time goes by, a copyright law must be modified.
I think that a copyright law should not be applied to music file sharing because those activities are too common. People don’t consider piracy as a theft even though almost everyone has heard that piracy is illegal. Now, music file sharing is common norm.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4831-net-music-piracy-does-not-harm-record-sales.html
Yuki I agree to your opinion about the internet music piracy as not a crime and is not illegal. Also as you say the music companies such as Sony can earn through the sale of music devices. Thus in a way the “free music” i.e through internet sharing of the files boosts the sale of the music devices. Also these music recording label such as Sony, Universal Music etc earn huge profits just by selling a piece of cd or dvd which costs more than $50. I believe that even though the Legislation puts strict norms it is not easy to control the internet music piracy, in fact I believe it is impossible!
ReplyDeleteYou raised a good point that there is tradeoff between sales of CD and sales of music devices.
ReplyDeleteI agree that. However, i believe it is a theft because it is used by other people without owners' permission or authority. If in the morning, you woke up and got ready to go to work. You found that your car was gone. What would you do and what do you think about it?
In addition, there is ethical issue. Is it ethical to share others' products for free? If you work so hard and put so much efforts there, do you want other people to have it for free? Think about it. Put yourself on their shoes.
Yuki, great post. The fact that a huge company such as Apple has embraced online music sharing by introducing its iTunes program has also led to the normalization of the industry. Apple has found an ingenious way of taking advantage of the phenomena by placing a relatively small price on each song available for download. This makes its consumers feel safe in that they are obtaining their favorite music the legal way but also the price is low enough that it is not as large a burden as purchasing the entire album in the record store. Convenience also plays a huge role as many people prefer to sit at home on their computers to search for music instead of going to the record store in person.
ReplyDelete