In the music world I believe that if an artist who personally wants their music to be heard by everybody then they should have no problem with illegal sharing on the internet. Personally I think that not purchasing an artists musical piece at a CD store, through iTunes or any other possible method is disrespectful to the artists. The artist might really need the support through the purchase of their work and without the support of their fans they cannot make more music. I cannot say that it is necessarily not done and not apparent in society today because even my dad has illegally downloaded music. I haven't but I know that it is a huge part of society because NOBODY wants to purchase music when you can get it for FREE. Think about it like this, if you could download a car in 30 seconds without any consequences would you do it. OF COURSE. But to be fair a good way to show your appreciation of somebodys music would be to buy their work. Just because there's an easier way to get something does not mean that it is right. There are many laws prohibiting the illegal download of musical works or distributing them that way whether it be over the internet or through a mix or burned CD. A case where the penalty has been extreme is “A federal court in Massachusetts has upheld a $675,000 judgment against a man accused of illegally downloading 31 songs and sharing them with other people on a file-sharing website. Joel Tenenbaum was sued by some of the largest music labels in the U.S., including Sony BMG, Warner Brothers, Atlantic, Arista, and UMG. Tenenbaum had requested for a new jury trial after the music labels were awarded $675,000 in damages.” ( Sean Ludwig “Court upholds $675K fine on man accused of illegally downloading 31 songs” venturebeat.com, 2012). This was a huge court case with the BU student and it was settled for him to pay this huge fine which will most likely put him in debt for the rest of his life. Before the more recent high speeds of the internet, in 2000 a music sharing site called napster.com was sued by the metal band Metallica because of copyright infringement. The bands drummer Lars Ulrich came forth to the Senate Judiciary Committee to read his testimony. He said that Napster had illegally gained access to one of their songs before release, the song “I Disappear” was supposed to be released in the Mission: Impossible II Soundtrack and Lars had heard it off the radio which led him to find the entire album illegally acquired and available for download on napster.com. Metallica sought at a minimum $10 million in damages and at 100,000 per song download. NetPD was an online firm that viewed and recorded the napster page where the songs were posted and 355,435 users of napster were found to be illegally downloading and sharing their music. Dr. Dre also teamed up to take down napster for what they had done and in 2002 they had received so many allegations that they had to stop what they were doing and shut down the company. This shows how the illegal download of music can lead to huge problems for people. Some of the laws that prohibit acts like this are:
If you make unauthorized copies of music for people to download illegally, you are both stealing and breaking the law. People who are found guilty of copying music illegally could be held liable to pay thousands and thousands of dollars in damages. If you are caught doing this, you could potentially be sued in civil court. (http://www.ehow.com/)
Breaking these kinds of laws can cause fines up to millions of dollars, lowest fine is that of 750 dollars per song. To be honest the best way to avoid any kind of problem like this is to purchase your music off of iTunes or whatever program you use because at the end of the day, nobody wants to pay off something as embarrassing as this.
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