Raul Nunez

April 14, 2014

Background/Problem
Piracy has been around since the early days of the internet. In the early 2000s, music
could be downloaded for free from programs such as Napster and other peer-to-peer clients.
These services led to the music industry taking a stance against piracy and suing the companies.
One of the first major instances of a legal case dealing with modern internet piracy was the
Napster vs A&M Records case in which Napster was found to have infringed on the copyright of
the record companies who held the rights to the music being distributed via Napster (Crews). It
also held peer-to-peer networks accountable for the distribution of copyrighted material (Crews).
The results of the case would ultimately lead to the shutdown of Napster. The results would also
receive criticism for condemning Napster as only being use for copyright infringement while it
was also used to share non-copyrighted material which made it seem as though the judge was
condemning peer-to-peer technology as a whole (Litman).
Lobbying by music companies has also had a profound effect on policy created by the
United States government. An example of how music copyright affects international policy is the
USs threat to withhold Russias membership from the World Trade Organization (Toraman).
This threat did cause Russia to adopt similar policies as the US regarding intellectual property.
The music companies lobby for this type policy since music sales have decreased over recent
years (RIAA). Currently the companies lobby for copyright policy but they have the potential of
lobbying for harsher punishment for those that have committed piracy as a means to decrease
piracy and increase profits. Companies mostly lobby for anti-piracy measures as an easy way to
improve sales with the logic that without a way to obtain music for free more people will legally
purchase the music.
Punishment for copyright range from large fines to conviction and serving time in prison.
The case Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum resulted with Joel Tenenbaum losing the case and having to
pay $675,000 for illegally downloading 30 songs. The sum is extremely excessive as every song
he downloaded was valued at being worth $22,500 (Weiner). Tenenbaum argued that he would
not be able to pay the fine. Another case of excessive punishment comes from Jeremiah Perkins,
the leader of the movie distribution network group IMAGiNE, who was sentenced to five years
in prison and fined $15,000 dollars in restitution (June). The average sentence for assault in the
U.S. is 61 months. In this case, a non-violent crime has the same punishment as a violent crime.
This sentencing is also around the same amount of time served by rapist who on average only
serve 65 months in prison although the average sentence is 117 months (Greenfeld).
Sending people to prison for large amounts of time for crimes that do not involve
violence, or death is unnecessary as it means that piracy has the same effect and is in the same
level of impact as the other crimes. One of the implications with pirating is that it is assumed that
the person pirating would buy the media he is pirating. A question this brings up is is the pirate
actually stealing if he was not going to buy the song he pirated? (Jost). I believe it is not stealing
since there was never going to be a sale for that content. There are sites such as YouTube where
people can listen to the music for free regardless of ownership so listening to music for free is
not unheard of. The only difference would be that the person listening on YouTube cannot listen
to it offline as it requires an internet location. YouTube generates revenue from the music posted
by placing ads in the side of the player and displaying video ads before the video loads although
there exist tools to circumvent the ads by blocking them, essentially this can be seen as another
form of theft yet the music industry does not go after this program. Charging the pirates with
large fines seems excessive as the value of the music they pirated is not there since there is no
guarantee that the sale of the music being pirated would have sold through legal means it or if it
would have been watched on YouTube and it cannot be counted as a sale that was lost. That is
the problem with piracy being illegal and punishable as it leads to people being found guilty of
creating losses for the music industry and paying for those losses although the effect that their
piracy had on the sales of music might have never amounted to or got close to the fee they are
often charged with.

Works Cited

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Library." Case Summary A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. National Science
Foundation, 18 Sept. 2001. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
Greenfeld, Lawrence A. "Prison Sentences and Time Served for Violence." Bureau of Justice
Statistics. U.S. Department of Justice, Apr. 1995. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
June, Daniel. "File-Sharer Receives Longest Prison Sentence Yet: 5 Years - JD Journal." JD
Journal. JDJournal, 4 Jan. 2013. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
Jost, Kenneth. "Copyright and the Internet." CQ Researcher 29 Sept. 2000: 769-92. Web. 23
Apr. 2014.
Litman, Jessica. "Amended Brief Amicus Curiae Of Copyright Law Professors In Support Of
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"RIAA - Who Music Theft Hurts." Http://www.riaa.com. RIAA, 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
Richtel, Matt. "Napster Is Told to Remain Shut." New York Times. New York Times, 12 July
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Piolatto, Amedeo, and Florian Schuett. "Music Piracy: A Case of The Rich Get Richer and the
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Toraman, Ozgur Radin, Tara J. "Piracy of Intellectual Property." Encyclopedia of Business
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April 2014.
Weiner, Stephanie. "Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum." JOLT Digest. Ed. Evelyn
Breithaupt. JOLT Digest, 12 Aug. 2009. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.