Ask
yourself this question. How would you feel if someone cheated you out of your
money? How would you feel if you worked 40+ hours at a job and only got paid
for 30 of those hours? You would be mad and ready to blow something up. How do
you think music artist feel when you steal their music; when they can’t pay
their bills or pay back the debt from the record company? They are just as mad
as you would be. Actor Jack Black said in a piracy ad, “Superstars are just
regular dudes like you guys. We punch the clock, we put on the pants, and we
blow people minds. That’s how we make a living.” This quote connects your
favorite music artist to just another person walking down that street who is trying to
make a living in today’s society.
It is
not ok to just steal from people who worked hard to create a form of art for
many people. If you don’t want to buy their albums just listen to their songs
from the official YouTube pages. Don’t go the easy route and steal from them
like most people do. The RIAA reports, “The
Recording Industry Association of America reports that approximately 63% of
U.S. consumers illegally download music. In most cases, it is illegal to
download music. Copyright laws must be followed.” This over half of the
percentage of people who listen and buy music, which is means mostly everyone
steals music. So many people are losing money because of music piracy. The RIAA
reports, “One credible analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation
concludes that global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses
every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers' earnings,
and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax
and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.” The report
copies can be found here.
To
show the other side of the music piracy in this video they show how sharing is
caring. They believe everyone needs to be able to access music no matter what.
They made a commercial to show examples of how the sharing of music or any type
of piracy should be.
I’ve
shown you both sides of the music piracy crisis. This is not a topic to be
taken lighly because it effects many people behind the scenes of your favorite
artist your stealing from. I hope my 3 blogs have convinced you to stop
stealing music and either YouTube it or buy it legally. Seeing anyone go broke
isn’t fun, so the next time you get on the internet how will you listen to your
music?
Malik I read your post and I have to say that I agree with you. That piracy is a growing problem now and not just for music, but movies to. Unfortunately though what can we do? There are so many different ways to download pirated material. Whenever one way gets shut down another way opens up. Then if there was a way to monitor who was illegally downloading material who do you punish for it. Do you punish the person that posted the material or do punish the people who actually downloaded the material. How would you punish people because like you said 63% of people do it or have downloaded material before? You just can't throw them all in jail, we don't have enough jails. Unfortunately I think that this problem has grown so big that the best course of action is to trust people to do the right thing.
ReplyDeleteMalik, this is a growing topic today. It is hard to say exactly which side I agree on. The way I see it is that it is wrong for people to take peoples music for free, but there isn't any way to stop it from happening. People will find away to get the music they want without paying for it. There are multiple apps and websites to use nowadays. I also feel like it is hard for me to agree because I myself download all my music for free. It is outrageous how much music cost. So I believe one way to fix this problem would be to lower the price of music. But as I see it, I do not see this problem getting resolved.
ReplyDelete