"Even though legal downloading is on the increase, sites are being criticised on how useful and available they are. "

Music downloads have got everyone talking. But I’ve heard enough from the record industry and police. Cube investigates why young people download music illegally from the Internet. It’s estimated that 92% of people downloading in Britain are getting their music free from illegal file-sharing networks. The record industry has no way of closing down the networks, so they are targeting the users (young people). So we are the people who have and will be prosecuted. Even though legal downloading is on the increase, sites are being criticised on how useful and available they are. Are fans making music more available than the actual record industry?

Legal and Illegal

For those of you who don’t know anything about music downloading or the difference between legal and illegal ones: When music is downloaded legally, sites like Napster and iTunes work with music companies to sell music on the web.

The music is stored on a main website that everyone accesses; you pay for music as a subscription or per track using a credit card, debit card or credit systems. However when people download illegally they download a free program like KaZaA or Limewire, they become part of a network where you can all access each other’s music.

High quality legal sites have a maximum access of 50,000 tracks compared to the millions available on P2P networks. Remixes, obscure tracks and copies of live performances unavailable on CDs are available on P2P networks.

Industry

The money artists and bands receive from their music sales is their main source of income. Cube talked to Roo Piggot, a program co-ordinator for Inspiral, Sheffield. He specialises in the Record Industry and music promotion. Roo says, ‘At it's most basic, illegal downloading means that an artist doesn't get paid anything for their work, even though thousands of people may be owning and copying it.’ However, ‘An interesting thing about this is that some bands deliberately put their music onto illegal download sites’, ‘so that they get heard by more people’. They might care more about making the music, instead of the money. Would you work for nothing? They can’t make the records if no one is paying them. It is very hard for new bands and music artists to lift off when they lose money from illegal downloading. The industry and artists put in the work, shouldn’t they get paid?

Our views

Illegal downloading is most popular with young people so it's only fair that we should express our opinions about why we do it. Half of the people I talked to admit they have downloaded illegally, and half of those said they do it regularly. Young files-sharers are seen as criminals, but surely all they want to do is listen to their favourite band?

 Patrick, 15, doesn’t download but says, ‘It’s good news, takes money away from the record companies. They don’t deserve it all’. However Mosina says that, ‘It’s wrong, but if they can’t stop it, why is it illegal?’ Also people I have talked to understand the pros and cons of illegal downloading, ‘you do get loads of spyware and viruses etc. Which will actually seriously harm you computer, so you have to be careful of that.’ A few people I have talked to say that they have downloaded songs on sites that they thought were legal and turned out to be illegal.

 

The Law

Music tracks are copyright, so when people share them they are breaking the copyright law. Music piracy is any form of unauthorized duplication or distribution of music including downloading file sharing, and CD-burning.

-In the U.S. you can be fined $250,000 (about £135,000) and get a sentence of 5 years, if you use one of these networks! 
-An American twelve-year-old Madonna fan got fined 2000 dollars.

-A French teacher got fined 10,200 Euros (£5,415) for file sharing, but he shared 30GBs worth of music, that’s around 10,000 songs.

 

If so many people are downloading music illegally, the industry needs to look at the reasons why people aren’t buying music. If we are the culprits, why not make music more available to us, instead of taking us to court? Singles are too expensive, £1.99 for just one song! I don’t own a debit or credit and I'm sure most of you don’t either, so the only way we can pay on legal download websites is from your parents’ cards. Let’s face it teenagers aren’t the richest of people! The record industry has a right to take action, after all if music piracy wasn’t frowned upon everyone would do it; the music industry would close down. There wouldn’t even be any new music to listen to... illegally or not.

 
By Susan Burnell