MUSIC PIRACY

Definition- The illegal downloading and sharing of music without copyright permissions  from the artists/record companies- infringing copyright laws.

The Digital Economy Act

Made in April 2009, the act states that internet service providers (ISPs) must carry out the following when investigating piracy:

-issue letter warnings

-slow down or suspend offenders internet access

-use a graduated response system (3 strikes and you're out)

-disclose identities to the police

-issue fines of up to £50000

-block illegal websites

Criticisms

There are many criticisms and inconsistencies within the act:

-Will public wi-fi users be affected? If someone downloads from public wi-fi could the whole thing be shut down? This is not fair on legitimate users

-It is not stated as to when a person should be fined and if it amounts to a criminal record

-As it is hard to pinpoint one offender, who will be prosecuted?

-Can piracy truly be proven? People may use someone elses wi-fi to carry it out or pretend to be somebody else

-Do the public agree with the act? (BBC found that 87% of people in their survey think uncensored internet access should be a fundamental right. Talk Talk found that 80% of young people will continue to illegally download and did a 'Do not disconnect us' campaign in 2009)

-The issue is too hard to police- is it really worth police time?

-Who should take the responsibility of policing it? Just ISPs or the public?

Limewire

The company was founded in 2000 by a former Wall Street trader- Mark Gorton. In 2010 they were forced to pay money to EMI, Sony and Universal for copyright infringement. They were finally shut down after the 4 year legal battle when a federal court in New York issued a permanent injunction against them. According to the RIAA, this caused US music sales to fall from 14.5 billion in 1999 to 7.7 billion in 2009. The NDP group also found that 58% of people who illegally downloaded music in 2009, from May, used the site.

The Pirate Bay

RIAA seek $13 million for 34 cases of copyright infringement from the founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. Him and the co-founders had their one year jail sentence reduced to between 4 and 10 months on appeal. They were order to pay only $7 million. Warg still continues to commit illegal hacking and will be deported next week to Denmark to face charges of stealing confidential data. He is being deported from Sweden where he is serving a one year jail sentence for a separate offence. Police want to talk to him about a hack on computers holding police files.

Napster

The company has been sued by 18 record companies for it's illegal sharing of music- including the metal band Metallica. The complaint filed against them was 'the vicarious and contributory copyright infringement on behalf of a putative class of similarity situated music publishers.' They were prosecuted under the California Civil Code 980a)2). According to Napster they gave their users the unprecedented ability to locate music by their favourite artist in MP3 format- gaining 75 million users by 2000. The company grew at 200% per month from then on and forsaw that they would make money from email, advertising and commissions from links to other sites. It was estimated that the company was worth 60-80 million dollars with 87% of it's files being copyrighted. Nowadays, Napster has become a legitimate site with copyright permissions, a free trial and users that pay to use it.