I’m going to do research on illegal downloading of music. Before I start, I’ve asked myself six questions to be answered at the end of this research so therefore I will be looking up the answers to these questions.
• How does illegal downloading affect the music industry?
• Why do a lot of people illegally download music?
• What does the future hold for illegal downloading?
• What are people doing to stop illegal downloading?
• When did illegal downloading of music start?
• How many people are downloading illegally?
I wanted to gain a general understanding of music downloading before I started doing research on illegal downloading. As http://www.wikipedia.com/ is known for giving information quickly and simple I searched for music downloading in Wikipedia to find out more about it.
I then searched for illegal downloading in Google to find which websites were the most popular searched websites.
I went on the most popular website given which is the http://www.quardian.co.uk/ with the article of James Murdoch talking about illegal downloading.
In the article it said that “James Murdoch called on the governments to get tough on illegal downloading, which he said was no different from “going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag”.” He talked about the fact that the government should give harder punishments to the youth and anyone who steal, if its products in the shop or music and videos on the internet, they should get a strong punishment.
I thought this was a bad source as I it lacked information and only told me what James Murdoch thought about the subject but didn’t tell me how he was going to change this or what is already been done about it. Also this source didn’t give me any statistics or facts about illegal downloading.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/10/murdoch-illegal-dowloading-stealing-handbag
I then went on the third most popular searched website which was the www.bbc.co.uk/news website where I then looked at two articles on illegal downloading. One article was about the US illegal downloading rise, the second one was about a new law in Britain to prevent and stop illegal downloading from happening.
“It's thought that music and film companies may have lost "hundreds of millions of pounds" because of it. Around seven million people in the UK are said to be involved in illegal downloading.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3402349.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8610000/newsid_8611100/8611163.stm
I thought this was a good source as it gave me much information about illegal downloading and it also gave me facts and figures. This answers one of the questions I asked myself ‘How many people download music illegally?’ “Around seven million people in the UK are said to be involved in illegal downloading.” Which tells you that a lot of people out there are downloading without paying for it; this of course brings the record companies down as they aren’t getting paid, and so what exactly is the future for the music industry?
I found a blog which had a post about illegal downloading were they answered questions that the public asked. On there I read something interesting, “Illegal downloader’s will soon be receiving warning letters, after the UK music industry reached an agreement with the six main internet service providers (ISPs).” So this tells me that the music industry are doing something about the issue that still remains which is people illegally downloading music from the web.
http://stuff.tv/blogs/music/archive/2008/07/24/uk-s-illegal-downloading-crackdown-the-facts.aspx
I thought this was a good source as it gave you facts about the issue and told you what exactly would be happening for the people that download music without paying for it. This also answers one of the questions I asked myself, ‘What are people doing to stop illegal downloading?’ As I read in this blog and in other articles across the web I found out that a lot of people are trying to stop the downloaders by threatening them, they are sending letters were it says that they will have to pay a fine for all the downloading they did illegally.
As I wanted to broad my research I listened to a podcast by Stephen Fry were he talked on the fifth night of the ITunes festival in 2009.
He attacked people who download files on an “industrial scale” but said “making examples of ordinary people is the stupidest thing the record industry can do.” He went on to say that the much heralded Digital Britain report represented the views of “industry insiders” instead of the general public. I thought this was a very good source as Stephen Fry talked about illegal downloading in a real depth and made it more clearly to everyone what is going on.
I also read a book by Sexton, Jamie called Digital music: production, distribution and consumption, I found this a very good source as it really gives you the history of the music industry and the history of downloading. “The sharing of music files started around the mid-1990s: at this point, it was difficult to download music because of very slow connection speed”. “What did follow was a tussle between the official industry and the activities of those deemed illegal by that industry”. As I read through some of the pages of this book I found out that people have been downloading for a very long time.
While researching I found a video on youtube about illegal downloading, were people of the industry talk about illegal downloading and what they would do if the public keep illegally downloading music and videos. I thought this was a good source as it tells you what the people are doing about illegal downloading. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgDR90kgFnw
I went on http://www.google.com/ and searched for the pros and cons of illegal downloading.
I found this website http://hubpages.com/hub/legal-download-services that has an article on it which tells you everything about downloading and what will be done if you do download. “Millions of users who download files illegally from the Internet will soon be banned from accessing the Internet in a major battle against Internet theft...”
I thought this was a bad source, even though all the information on there was very interesting and insightful. The website isn’t reliable as it is not yet been updated since 2003.
So therefore the information given in this article is quite irrelevant.
Other sources I looked at on the internet while doing my research to find out about illegal downloading. http://www.bized.co.uk/current/research/2003_04/011203.htm
This is a good source as it gives you much detail about the subject. The website also gives you, graphs and statistics. They then explain the problem that the record companies are having and what the problem is with stopping illegal downloading.
http://www.copynot.com/
I thought this website was a good source because of the information that’s been given to you. They also tell you how you can help the industry recover. “You can help halt the spread of these felonies by reporting copyright or trade mark violations and all acts of piracy here.”
http://www.nme.com/news/duffy/38499
This article is a very interesting one as Duffy the artist tells the magazine that she supports illegal downloading. “Duffy has suggested that she supports illegal downloading - as she believes it will ultimately inspire fans to buy more music.”
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Yourchildshealthandsafety/Internetsafety/DG_071136
This website is a bad source as it hasn’t been updated in a while and I also thought that the information given wasn’t relevant to today’s information.
Don't Steal Copyrighted Stuff!: Avoiding Plagiarism and Illegal Internet Downloading (Prime) [Library Binding]
Ann Graham Gaines (Contributor)
This was a good source as it told you how you can avoid downloading illegally from the internet by using safe and industry kind software to download.
These are bad sources as these websites supports illegal downloading.
http://www.limewire.com/
http://www.bearshare.com/
http://www.ez-tracks.com/
http://www.mp3raid.com/
People download illegally because they think it’s a quicker and easier way of getting to the music, this of course affects the music industry in a negative way. Without CD sales, record companies lose about 85% of recording released. Record companies depend heavily on the profitable 15% of recordings to subsidize the less profitable type of music, to cover the costs of developing new artists, and to keep their businesses operational. The downloaders often don’t focus on the 85% as they go straight to the top to steal the gold. A lot of people download music illegally, “the IFPI, has released a report which claims that more than 40 billion songs were illegally downloaded in 2008 and these results have risen since then”. So therefore a lot of people are losing money and this isn’t helping the industry at all.
I personally think illegal downloading is bad and will support the music industry by buying music.
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