Piracy has over the year grown to become an epidemic in the music industry. Its increased practices such as illegal access of music content without copyright permissions have continued to cripple the music business. It has led to a significant drop in the number of revenues realized from the sale of music albums hence negatively affecting the artist’s financial positions (Cummings, 2017). Through organizations such as recording industry association of America, a body established to help protect the music content or artists, active piracy has been seen to have reduced.
To manage music piracy, the organization has in the past applied several legal strategies. Among them being, litigations against several individuals who got considered as infringers of music copyrights. It has targeted both the centralized distribution networks as well as decentralized peer to peer networks. The company later began seeing individuals who got suspected of sharing music.
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In my opinion, the move to proceed in filing legal suits against individual’s who were found sharing music content was a move that would hurt the artist in the long run. Considering that the individuals were sharing the music out of interest for the musician and loyalty to their music, the individual would have negatively marketed the artist hence reducing their publicity.
The policy for arresting the individual found to be sharing the music content is filled with several unjoining knots. First and foremost, it would be difficult to establish that the actual person who is arrested was the one sending the music. Since such scenarios lack witnesses, it would be challenging to develop substantial evidence that would incriminate the individual. Secondly, the advancement in technology has brought about several apps that have made it possible for individuals to access music online. With the ever-increasing number of online users, it would be difficult to adequately monitor the actions of every individual who is online to establish that specific persons violate the music copyright laws. Lots of resources which in this case are not available would get required to achieve such a goal.
There exist strategies that can successfully get adopted to help in preventing music piracy. Some of them include
Agreement with an Online Host
Striking an agreement with online platforms such as YouTube and coming up with the idea of disabling the download link in their music will help reduce the level of piracy. The music should just get viewed but not able to be downloaded or shared among other online users. Through this, one will have to watch the music online or purchase the album.
Licensing
Individuals engaging in the trade of selling or sharing music should have a legal license that permits them to participate in such practices (Tyler, 2012). Business premises for example movie shops which will get noted for selling or sharing music content without authentication will face legal action. By doing this, an individual will get encouraged to have music licenses that allow them to sell or share the music contents.
Technologies That Trace the Illegal Distribution
Music piracy takes place between two interested parties. They include persons providing the illegal content as well as the providers of the technology used in sharing the files. The industry can effectively manage the situation by coming up with means such as adopting watermarking mechanisms that would help to trace where the illegal information’s source. It will get achieved by working hand in hand with the online stores that will help in uprooting infringing apps.
Public Awareness Campaigns
Running of programs that would educate the young children on the impacts of piracy will help in reducing the rate. The programs will incorporate ways of having access to music content legitimately as well as spelling out the consequences of getting found pirating music content. Through this, the public will try to avoid engaging in the music piracy vice.
References
Cummings, A. S. (2017). Democracy of sound: music piracy and the remaking of American copyright in the twentieth century . Oxford University Press.
Tyler, N. S. (2012). Music piracy and diminishing Revenues: How compulsory licensing for interactive webcasters can lead the recording industry back to prominence. U. Pa. L. Rev. , 161 , 2101.
