Internet Music Piracy via P2P File Sharing The age of the internet has brought with it a revolution.

While it was meant to be an entirely positive development, as is often the case with technology, the resulting usage of an innovation is different from original intent. [1] One such field that technology has drastically altered is music. The internet makes music more easily available to a larger audience and also gives the audience a taste of what to expect by virtue of previews and promotional work. On the other hand, the Internet also gives music pirates a new weapon. With the Internet culture of free-of-charge, theft of intellectual property is rampant. [8] Many years ago, one would need sophisticated equipment to make an acceptable copy of a soundtrack. With the advent of compact discs and digital audio files, making copies of music tracks became easier than ever before. Music piracy hit a peak due to the advent of internet. Due to the sheer number of people using this facility, it is too easy for one to share copyrighted music files online and not get caught. While e-mail, instant messengers and direct download is common, peer-to-peer is arguably the most popular as well as efficient way to share files. In fact, as of [2], music downloading as a form of peer-to-peer electronic commerce is gaining fast acceptance in the user community. While music is often legally shared, it is prone to being misused for music piracy. Every year, millions of tracks are illegally downloaded all over the world, leading to the drop in sales of music albums. With illegal downloads costing essentially nothing, it is obvious that this method is far less expensive for consumers than buying the original. [3] This has led music artists to suffer financial losses, as digital goods are expensive to produce for the first copy (high-fixed costs) and inexpensive to reproduce and distribute for subsequent copies. [4] On-going efforts are being made to stop music piracy. Stringent internet laws have been passed, but this merely diminishes it by a small fraction. To stop this piracy, some music artists are producing CDs that will not play on a computer but, besides being a hassle to the audience, this can be bypassed. The only commendable success they have achieved is closing down file-swapping softwares like Napster and Limewire. NPD estimates there were 16 million P2P users downloading music in Q4 2010, which is 12 million fewer than in Q4 2007 [5], after Limewire was shut down following a law suit filed by Recording Industry Association of America in 2007 for allegedly encouraging the pirating of billions of songs and hence infringing copyright. However, everything is not as simple to solve. According to a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for Microsoft, record industry attempts to stop the swapping of music on online networks will never work. [6] P2P sharing is used by millions of people all over the world, and the steady growth of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down. [6] This relates to the fact that stricter laws too will be ineffective in the long run. Therefore, one needs to go in-depth into the root cause of the problem, that people consider digital media to be overpriced. By lowering the prices, digital pirates will re-examine the cost of pirating versus buying and hopefully tilt the balance towards buying. [3] Besides that, being able to purchase single tracks on websites and the iTunes Store is a step in the right direction. Spotify, a music streaming service that provides music from varying labels to members free of cost and legally, needs to be promoted. In fact, Microsoft has collaborated with Spotify to bring a Spotify app for Windows Phone, and as of today the Spotify mobile app will be available for all Windows phone 6.x owners to download and use with their Spotify Premium accounts. [7] The internet is used to share information throughout the world. While this has been misused by its users by means of peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material, there is no way around it. While technology can be used to curb it, it can never really be completely gotten rid of. While internet music piracy has brought along with it its own set of problems that have been disruptive to the music industry, we must end on a positive note that it has also led to the rampant spread of an artists music which is promotional in nature. Therefore, curbing the problem, even if not ending it, can be seen as a reasonable compromise.

References:

[1] 'Strange sounds: music, technology & culture' by Timothy Dean Taylor [2] T. Kwong, M. Lee, "Behavioral Intention Model for the Exchange Mode Internet Music Piracy," hicss, vol. 7, pp.191, 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'02)-Volume 7, 2002 [3] Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Volume 24, Issue 2, Article first published online: 17 JUL 2007 [4] R.D. Gopal and G.L. Sanders, Global spftware piracy: You can't get blood out of a turnip, Communication of the ACM, Vol. 43, No. 9, September 2000, pp. 82-89. [5] NDP Group Press Release: With Limewire Shuttered, Peer-to-Peer Music File Sharing Declines Precipitously http://www.npdgroup.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_110323 [6] BBC news: Efforts to stop music piracy 'pointless' [7] Microsoft Guest Blog: Spotify on working with Microsoft Press Release

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/emea/presscentre/pressreleases/SpotifyGuestBlog_04102010. mspx
[8] Anonymous, Introduction to Online Music Piracy, Recording Industry Association of America, Washington, 2001.