Free Music Hurts Music Giants

The world of high technology and endless innovations made its way to music consumers from all over the world. This definitely opened new ways in enjoying music, whether it is through legal ways or the other way around. With the bad smell of piracy spreading the stink globally, its time for music companies to fight against it, in order to save the music business today.

Music giants are once again at odds with the consumer electronic manufacturers. This time, it is very much related to piracy—the controversy over specific information technology products that enables consumers to copy digital music and transfer them into different formats, or exchange them over the Internet. This has been going on ever since people knew about it, and this alone greatly affects the music business today.

Over the last few years, the music industry has fed the media statistics about piracy, or the act of copying digital music content to a blank CD, or uploading or downloading it from the Internet. According to articles, an estimated 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded each month in the US. In 1999, the music industry estimated that one in four CDs of new music was actually an unauthorized copy. By end of 2001, it was estimated that as many CDs were burned and copied as were bought. Since 1999, CD burner ownership has nearly tripled. This trend is attributable to the slow economy, among many other factors. However, the music business today seems to believe that the culprit in this trend is the rise of digital music—free online sharing, and the growing number of CD burners.

For self-defense, big music record companies are developing technology for anti-piracy, to protect their copyrighted music against the information technology’s movement towards user-friendly digital software and hardware. Few of the biggest music labels are experimenting on anti-piracy technologies designed to fight the online file sharing. Both Sony and BMG have already implemented copy-protection systems, which prevents their CDs from being played on any device that is not a simple CD player. Another music label is also licensing another anti-piracy technology, where it prevents consumers from reformatting songs into MP3 format files and burning copies, or making them available for file sharing systems. This anti-piracy technology called Cactus will prevent music from playing on the Playstation 2, a number of car stereos and DVD players, even on PCs, and also disables stand alone CD burners.

There will come a point where progress may feel more like loss than gain, especially when a technology that an industry has developed becomes outdated. While this may seem frustrating, the proper solution is not to hinder progress; instead, adapt accordingly. Both the congress and the music industry giants should make necessary changes in the legislation to make it more effective for the next generation.

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