The music and film industries have undergone immense changes
since the onslaught of the digital age.
At my age I prefer to purchase live music in the form of concert tickets
as opposed to mp3 or cd compilations.
You cannot capture the organic sound of music by squashing and
compressing it into an mp3 format.
Often times I listen to the music produced at the local and national
levels and hear slight variations but to the untrained consumer ear most of the
process is lost. If I do decide to
purchase music that I wanted to listen to over and over again, I use Amazon as
an easy and affordable resource for single track downloads and I purchase cd’s
from the artist directly as many artists retain their onsite sales proceeds
above and beyond the number of discs that are pressed for retail outlets.
Local artists are often ecstatic when someone pirates their
music as it means someone is listening.
National acts are however much more tied to the fiscal responsibilities
of their label backing. As
investors in the projects they sign, labels have a much more legal take on the
money lost from illegal downloads.
I do not see this issue ending, well, EVER. With the decentralized nature and scope of the internet I
see a few areas that will need improvement and a few key points to consider
when establishing a viable business in digital media distribution. In the
future the following measures will be taken within the industry:
*Internet Security protocol will have to be constantly
updated on almost a daily basis.
*Items in the cloud become lodged there unable to download and are only available through apps on all of your media, thus never really allowing you to play songs without the software.
*Downloads will be structured so any additional duplication
of the files corrupts the media and does not allow for transfer to other
mediums more than once.
or
*Burning files will become obsolete and code can be written
to disallow the tracks from being replicated without a license that may be
purchased.
*Digital Uploading would be disallowed all together without
the proper approval codes being embedded in the websites, which is simple and
easy to do. The media would
basically have a failsafe implanted.
*Artists will take some of this into their own hands at
lower levels.
*Record Executives will have to take a pay cut in order to
finance the cost of said programs.
*Educating the consumers as to why even downloading one song
can exponentially contribute to the decline of the music industry.
“Criminal copyright infringement,
including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is
punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000." (www.fbi.gov/ipr/)
My opinion is that this is rather steep for teenagers and should be
placed in a tier system like all other crimes of passion (1st-5th
degree). Lets face it music is
passionate and most consumers aren’t downloading songs they don’t like. Most consumers don’t feel that these
parameters apply to them. The real
villains are those producing forums for consumers to download free material.
The “Illegal Download
Dilemma” is one of both societal and consumer relevance. One, it shows us all that the
expendable income of most people is on the decline, as long as pirating is on
the rise. It also shows us that
people are self-serving and in the midst of right and wrong it’s semantic! Perspective is a very real issue and
education is the only way to change the trend.
