Now Listening to...$3,000 settlement fines?!

Now Listening to...$3,000 settlement fines?!

Chances are, if you have a computer (connected to the internet) you have downloaded music to your computer. When the music file-sharing program “Napster” was introduced in 1999, people flocked to its website to join in on what millions were already doing. But back then, could any of them have ever dreamed that what they were doing was illegal? Or that Napster would be sued for copyright infringement? Napster was brought offline by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), and was recently reintroduced as a pay service, similar to Apple’s iTunes. Other free music downloading services have come into the public eye. But this time, instead of going after providers of these programs, the RIAA has decided to hunt down users of the programs – who are also their potential customers. Though many believe that these downloading programs should be shut down, I believe that they simply cannot, and should not go away.
Most against music downloading would say that it takes well-deserved money away from the artists. That may be true, but most who download entire albums had no intention of buying the particular CD in the first place. Take, for example, American Idol reject William Hung. He got his 15 minutes of fame singing his rendition of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs”, and got a record deal out of it. The question here is who bought his CD because of his talent? Most who purchased it did so to get a few laughs, and throw it aside soon after. Even more people simply downloaded it when it appeared on the internet, not wasting their money on something that could provide little or no lasting appeal. Others might say, “Why download music if you know it’s illegal?” The answer to that question is simple: with the enormous numbers of people downloading, the chances of facing lawsuit are slim to none. On top of that, many people sued are college students connected to their school’s network (though most universities have begun enforcing strict anti-music and film piracy rules).
Should music downloading be legal? Yes. I personally download music, but have purchased on average one CD every month, and probably more. Could the RIAA do something to make music downloading free and legal? Most likely, there could be some way.
Michael S. Malone said in an ABC News article, “Are they [music downloading] illegal? Sure they are. But the sheer numbers of participants suggests that what we are seeing is an upwelling of mass desire (or mass frustration) by an entire generation. This is not a genie that can be put back into the bottle, even by arresting 12-year-old girls.” As of this year, millions of people download music illegally, so the RIAA must have noticed since Napster in 1999 that this is not just a simple trend that can be phased out by suing college students and teenagers. The RIAA needs to realize this, and maybe develop a free and legal way to download music, but just not entire CDs. Nobody gets a lawsuit for recording music from the radio onto a cassette tape, why should it be illegal to download a popular song that could easily be recorded off the radio? Or in a similar instance, is it illegal to record a movie from movie channels such as HBO?
According to Felix Oberholzer-Gee, “the RIAA's legal strategy is hopeless and smacks of short-sighted panic.” The Recording Industry has sued several thousand people, and if they were to sue all the people downloading music, customers would be lost. Most people don’t have the money to pay the fines the RIAA has set; most settle the case at $3,000 to $4,000 rather than pay their full fines, some exceeding a half million dollars. The RIAA demands thousands of dollars per song downloaded, and many people have thousands of songs stored on their computer! Even at a rate of $2,000 a song, if 100 songs are downloaded, that’s a fine up to $200,000! Most people that are sued can’t afford either offer. When Napster was an issue several years ago, the provider of the illegal music was brought to court, not its customers.
For many artists, whether simply not famous or not on a major label, music downloading is one of few options to get their music heard by the public. The band Wilco, who hit #8 on the Billboard charts earlier this year with their album A Ghost Is Born, was dropped from Reprise Records in 2001 due to “creative conflicts”. After they left Reprise, they released their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in its entirety on their website. While many said that they “committed what some thought would be suicide,” their move proved a success, and when the album was released on Nonesuch Records (after Reprise dropped them from their label), it debuted higher than all of their prior releases. The band has become advocates on downloading; encouraging the industry that it’s not that big of a deal. When asked by the website, Wired.com, about the RIAA’s efforts to stop music downloading, Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy had this to say: “If they succeed, it will damage the culture and industry they say they're trying to save. What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them. Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.”
Leslie Brooks Suzukamo stated “The ongoing music downloading war is being fought on one side by a $12 billion music industry that says it is steadily losing sales to online file sharing. On the other side, untold millions of people – many of them too young to drive – who have been downloading free music off file-sharing sites with odd names like Kazaa and Grokster and accuse the music industry of price gouging and strong-arm tactics.”
Should music downloading be legal? Yes, though limits should be set, whether it be a set number of songs that can be downloaded total, or a set number per artist. I think people should be able to legally download singles from an album for free on an artist’s website, then have an iTunes-like service to purchase the rest of the album. Is the RIAA taking too much action on the “problem”? Yes, and many others believe so as well.