I recently stumbled upon an article (not literally) on Commonplace University. It was entitled It's Our Illegal Right and it was an article arguing that music downloading should not be illegal for the reason that it is very easy to obtain music, for free, through less than legal means. The author goes on to state that recording artists should not be paid thousands to millions of dollars for their songs. The main premise of the argument is: as (broke) college students, we cannot afford the extravagance that is purchasing music, and so if we can find free sources of music, we should not be penalized for utilizing those resources.

At first, I was quite against this argument. After all, isn't illegally downloading music the same thing as swiping a cd from a store? Not quite, you might say, you're only downloading one song. Well, I can tell you that it is entirely possible to download entire albums via the BitTorrent P2P protocol. However, there is a distinction to be made. A CD is a physical object, whereas a music file is purely digital. Is it right to charge for a digital copy? I think yes; however, I think once you obtain it, the file should be yours to do with as you please. Many online music stores, (even iTunes until quite recently) place restrictive copyright measures on the music files using a technology called DRM (Digital Rights Management). Depending on the type of DRM, this can restrict you to the number of computers you can play the music on, the programs you can play the music with, even restrict you to the amount of time you can play it.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand, should illegal downloading of music be legalized? I think it should not be as big a crime as it now. I don't think it is in any way fair for the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to be suing people for enormous sums of money just for sharing a few songs. I think it would be more meaningful if the RIAA launched an ad campaign highlighting the various benefits one receives from legally purchasing music (for example, via iTunes, there is a new feature called iTunes LP which also provides cover art, interactive behind-the-scenes exclusives, a parallel to DVD extras)

I think the main reason the RIAA is cracking down so hard is because they have no idea how to update their outmoded way of marketing to match the age of the Internet. They are still thinking of each digital download as a physical entity unto itself rather than merely a medium for the music to be played through.

Article Source: http://www.mhlearningsolutions.com/commonplace/index.php?q=node/3767

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