Internet Piracy: A Long Drawn Battle!

Music download & piracy have been in the sphere for quite some time now.  It causes lots of people to get what they want (easily) – music for free thus making it impossible for music companies to (supposedly) make the amount of cash they want to.

The piracy has been supported by a lot of people who think that the “manufactured” pop stars who have the blessings of the big labels & who churn the music that may be not of taste to everyone are not worth downloading. Also, that there are many more bands that live in remote parts of the world & without internet they can’t get the audience that they should have. More so such supporters want the power of choosing music in the hands of the listener & not with the advertiser/record company.

Then there are people like Bono & Metallica who simply hate the idea of such downloads. To them it is the amount of money they are loosing on every label that gets downloaded without payment. Recently Bono has made a statement that he embraces the concept of monitoring the data by Government organizations which makes it possible to stop such downloads altogether.

I personally feel that the Government should implement a lot of controls to first prevent the attacks & breaches it faces everyday on its sites. We all know that the UK Financial Investments was hacked yesterday, how can we expect the Govt. to enact such regulations when they can’t even keep themselves safe on the net? It isn’t realistic to think that such amount of control can be exercised by anyone over the internet.

Even the music industry has tried now & then introducing mechanisms like Anti-PC technology, CD’s which last 24/48 hours, copy-protected discs but has it really stopped the piracy. I think user’s have got around such technology & downloading happily again. Well I believe even though the crusade against piracy is drawn for a lengthy battle ahead, the mere idea of downloading music for free is not justifiable. After all, these musicians make their living out of it & numerous people working in the media organizations have their livelihood dependent on the sales. Maybe the media agencies charge a lot but it doesn’t give us a right to steal someone’s work without purchasing a license for it.

I know that both parties have their own theories which justify their actions but strictly speaking it is not a legal practice to indulge in such downloads. I however cannot buy the argument of recording agencies that they are loosing millions as a result of such downloads. Who says that if I download 100 songs online, I would have bought them if I hadn’t downloaded? There are surveys that indicate in the past that most people who download music are the ones that buy as well! The industry has started to realize the shutting down such servers & suing them won’t do them much good in terms of generating revenue. They have started offering song download at a price and that seems to be a step in the right direction.

img: indabamusic.com