Illegal Downloading

Record companies today believe that downloading music for free is a crime and hinders the sale of music in stores. Though it seems to be free, this paper present to the pros and cons of downloading music from the Internet. Important points will be discussed are the file sharing programs history, why downloading should be free and lawsuits for downloading music.

Peer-to-Peer technology is a form of file sharing that enables the sharing of computer resources such as, files by, direct exchange with other systems. P2P file sharing started with Napster in 1999 and has become the most popular way to share files (P2P File Sharing). Before Napster, computers for sharing files were extremely limited to the exchange of files on the file transfer protocol. Napster changed file sharing because of increased speed and Internet connections. Therefore, file-sharing programs like Napster became popular and opened doors for a variety of file sharing programs. These programs can do more than Napster was originally intended to do. They can develop file-sharing networks and swap everything from music files to video files (“P2P File Sharing Overview & History”). Some P2P file sharing networks that have emerged since Napster are: Morpheous, Kazaa, Aimster, Filetopia, iMesh, Songspy and WinMX. P2p networking is here to stay and it is evident that Napster played a significant role in inspiring other networks to expand by offering a variety of free music and useable software.

With computer age growing at a rapid rate, many consumers use the Internet for a number of reasons. One of the most popular uses is downloading music. Downloading music has become a plague that haunts the music industry on a daily basis. File sharing has allowed a vast number of people to acquire music that would cost a great deal of money in stores. Music companies argue that file sharing networks should not be able to allow consumers to download popular music. Declining sales is the number one argument record companies use to defend their rights concerning downloading music. Many believe that people will download and burn CDs containing their favorite songs and cause the music industry to lose a great deal of time, effort and money. Further arguments claim that CDs cost entirely too much money given that many may want the CD for one particular song, further music companies fail to realize that some songs that are downloaded using the P2P network are only used for those songs that are hard to find in stores.

Therefore, Peer-to-Peer networks have many useful applications and should not be closed to stop music privacy (“A debate with a focus on trading MP3’s”). Several years ago, the music industry had the same argument about cassette tapes, stating that the copying of cassette tapes did not hinder the sale of music. Websites have now enforced the copyright law. This implies that some music downloads are restricted and may charge a fee to download. Consequently,