Anti-Piracy Laws
On October 13th 2008 former President George W. Bush signed a bill called PRO-IP Act that gave greater protection to intellectual property (IP). Intellectual property is the creative ideas and finished products that come from the mind of an individual. Software, movies and music are examples of intellectual property. Intellectual property comes in three forms; they are trademarks, patents, and copyrights. Unfortunately, there has to be laws to protect the creativity of an individual. Since the internet there has been an explosion of copyright infringement. The black market or torrent websites have been profiting on the backs of creative people working hard to produce songs, movies and writing quality software programs. There are also people who have ten thousand dollars of software on their computer and they did not pay a dime. In the long run who is it who really gets the short end of the stick? It is the honest consumer who does.
There are some opinions that anti-piracy laws need to be completely overturned. Brandon Lee in the article, “Record Industry is becoming obsolete”, says “Progress should be the overturning of federal anti-piracy laws so that popular culture can be available to all people regardless of method of obtainment”. There are opinions that with all of the technology and websites that are out there everything should be free to the public. Specifically, digital music and movies. This is partially coming from the fact that Citibank owns EMI records which are one of the biggest if no the biggest record company in the world. If you remember the bank bailouts Citibank was one of the many banks bailed out by American taxpayers. Therefore, American taxpayers own EMI records and should be able to download music for free. This is a logical prospective from opponents of PROP-IP bill.
Just recently Google chairman Eric Schmidt has vowed to fight against the bills like PROTECT IP, which want the pirate websites to be shut down. Google’s concern is the government will have too much control and will shut down sites that have a freedom of expression rather than just piracy. Google at one time was allowing torrent sites to advertise with AdSense, which is their advertising program. So you could say that Google was profiting off of these pirate sites. Google reminds us of the restrictions of freedom of speech that China has and thinks that these laws would restrict Americans freedom of speech. The government promises to only target pirate sites. Again it will be at the discretion of the government to decide what they think is criminal.
One of the biggest backers of anti-piracy laws is the Recording Industry Association of America, otherwise known as RIAA. Over the years there has been a decrease in CD sales and The RIAA believes that illegal downloading of digital music is the cause of that decrease. When Napster started in 1999 it was the first music sharing system on the internet where users could download music from computer to computer. The reason why Napster was conceived was music consumers were tired of paying for a twelve to sixteen song CD and only getting two maybe three good songs for their money and the other songs were used to fill space on the CD. Napster users could select what song or songs they wanted and share the music with each other and not pay for it. This was considered infringement and violated copyright laws. You cannot reproduce a work and then take the work into your possession without paying for it. In 2001 the music industry filed a copyright infringement suit against Napster and shut it down after they were liable for copyright infringement. That is why nowadays there are so many ways you can pay for your downloads from places like ITunes, Tune Core and others.
In RIAA’s attempt to stop pirates by trying to bully normal citizens with lawsuits they have left a bad taste in the mouth of music lover’s world-wide. The RIAA and the music industry are trying combat pirates but in all reality they are not losing money only to pirates. The industry has changed so much with only very few songs being played on the radio and there are way too many new releases that are coming out all the time.
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