File Sharing

It seems the internet is now raising issues which are echoes of the past, this being the piracy issue which back in the 80’s was people recording music and not paying for it or people making multiple copies for resale , there are other laws applicable but these were the main two. The internet has now caused a shift due to high speed connections , which allow users to share large amounts of data relatively quickly , at their convenience and without having to make a physical copy. Vast libraries of audio/video, software can be browsed and downloaded by the user free of charge of course. This has caused a shift in how media is consumed, and is hitting the music industry where it hurts.

The music industry is now struggling to grasp back control using different measures, but this has not been as straight forward a solution when compared with that of the days of tape recording. There are two distinct sides to the argument which is stated here by Jeremy Silver, that one side is the view that file sharing leads to promotion of the artists work, and the other side is that revenue is being lost. This is also backed up here where mature members of the music industry Fergal Sharkey and Billy Bragg put forward their views which were previously mentioned, Billy Bragg championing the liberalists, stating that file sharing allows artists work to be promoted which is a good thing, however Fergal Sharkey championing the more conservative view, and states that it is damaging to the industry and gives an example whereby it is not just the major labels that are being hit it’s the small independent labels too. From these two examples it’s easy to understand where they are coming from. Personally I use free downloading to have a listen before buying, as I would always prefer having a hard copy for my collection, and I am sure there are many other music lovers who use free downloading for these reasons too.

So how can the music industry curtail the internet? Or is it too little too late? A meeting held at the end of 2009 attended by well known artists from within the music industry, in order to come to a unified decision on file sharing and what can be done about it, which was detailed on Jeremy Silvers blog, and reports how a compromise was reached whereby heavy downloader’s would have their bandwidth “squeezed” or slowed down allowing them to still browse the web and also ironically download but at much reduced speed. However this would be at much expense of the IP provider and also would require singling out of individuals downloading, and breach their privacy rights. A comment left by another user on Jeremy Silvers blog called Bjorn, stated that for an ISP to determine who was downloading illegally would require the ISP to track all packages which would reinforce my point earlier, which was that this would diminish net neutrality, another good comment left by Bjorn was that file sharing on the net is just one technical problem, and that in a few years time you will be able to share your whole music library on your I Pod with anybody with Wi FI or Bluetooth, and that the cost of memory for these devices will be even cheaper.

It seems that this examination of copyright issues and technology has just scratched the surface, as there are many more pro’s and con’s to this. However this small digest of recent copyright issues has presented some facts that suggest that in terms of so called piracy, file sharing, downloading per se, the music industry is crying over spilt milk.

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