Are the Measures Taken Against Illegal Music Downloading Effective?

Introduction

When a commercial about the release of a new album is seen or heard, most people run to their computer to download it, instead of run to the store and buy it. According to a Belgian broadcasting company, VRT, the profits of music sales fell worldwide by 4% and this only in the first 6 months of 2006. In the opinion of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, this decline is due to a sale decrease of CD's. ("Inkomsten van de muziekindustrie blijven dalen", 2006)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the measures taken against illegal downloading and to investigate their effectiveness.

The paper consists of three main sections. Firstly, a brief overview of the existing illegal downloading programs is given. The second section will explain why measures need to be taken. Finally, this paper discusses the measures and their effectiveness.

The Illegal Downloading Programs

A brief overview of the 5 most popular downloading programs will be given in this section, based on the websites of "Napster" (2006), "Kazaa" (2006), "BearShare" (2006), "LimeWire" (2006) and "Morpheus", (2006). An enumeration of all the websites, weblogs and programs, with which music can be downloaded, would stray from the actual subject. The subtitle announces that the programs are illegal; however this is not completely the truth. There are numerous illegal providers of music on internet, but most of them try to skirt around the copyright laws and therefore try to build a legal site or program.

The first online program that could be downloaded for free from the web was Napster. Shawn Fanning created this peer-to-peer music sharing service in 1999. Now music fans could easily share MP3 files with each other, free of charge. In July 2001 Napster had to shut down because it violated the copyright laws. However, Napster went back online in 2002, but the music lovers now had to subscribe and pay for the music that they want to download.

Napster was barely converted into a legal program, when Sharman Networks introduced a new peer-to-peer program, KaZaA. KaZaA offers as well as music, as video, software, documents and so on. Downloads are free of charge and the program is thus financed by bundled adware and spyware. This can be very disturbing because this spyware slows down the user's computer. From the moment KaZaA was born, it was plagued with several lawsuits regarding the violation of copyright laws.

A third well-known program is BearShare. This program is comparable with KaZaA. It also offers more than just music and it uses adware and spyware in the free downloadable version. However, there is also a difference. The user of BearShare can view other users' profiles, photos and music library. Sending instant messages to other users is also possible. An important difference is that music artists can online fill in a form to ask to monetize their songs or to stop the free distribution of their work. The question is whether this form is enough to protect the artists.

The fourth popular music tool is LimeWire. It uses the same network as BearShare, named Gnutella. Like BearShare there is a free version and a charged version. The only difference with BearShare is that it has no spyware and it utilizes firewall-to-firewall file transfers.

Finally, Morpheus was released in 2001. Morpheus too is free of spyware. The music fans however do need to have to contend with adware.

Why do measures need to be taken?

According to the Christian Music Trade Association (2004) "music piracy is any form of unauthorized duplication and/or distribution of music including downloading, file sharing, and CD-burning." CMTA also states that this piracy doesn't only affect the music industry, but also the pirate itself. The software namely exposes the user's computer to unwanted pornography, security breaches and viruses. These unpleasant effects are due to, among other things, the spyware and the adware mentioned in the previous section.

Atop of these unwanted intruders, music piracy is illegal and thus subject to strict laws and severe penalties. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) investigates the illegal production and distribution of sound recordings. Their website notifies that the fines can amount to $250,000 and music pirates can be imprisoned up to 10 years. ("Penalties of Piracy", 2006)

"Copyright is more than a term of intellectual property law that prohibits the unauthorized duplication, performance or distribution of a creative work. To artists, copyright means the chance to hone their craft, experiment, create, and thrive." ("Copyright", 2006) Unfortunately, it appears to be that the existence of the copyright laws is not enough since these laws are regularly neglected by music fans. Therefore, an obvious reason why new and effective measures need to be taken, is to prevent the violation of the copyright laws. This leads to the next section.

What are the most important measures taken and are they effective?

As mentioned before, the RIAA tries to locate illegal production and distribution of sound recordings in the United States of America. They are supported by "federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors' offices. The RIAA's team of Internet Specialists, with the assistance of a 24-hour automated webcrawler, helps to stop Internet sites that make illegal recordings available." ("What the RIAA is Doing About Piracy", 2003) Regrettable, this association is only active in the USA.

Fortunately, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (FPI) exists. "IFPI represents the recording industry worldwide with over 1450 members in 75 countries and affiliated industry associations in 48 countries. IFPI represents its members at three levels - international, regional and national. Internationally, the Secretariat in London works directly with industry committees in areas such as legal policy, performing rights and technology. At the regional level, the organisation's work is split between Asia, Europe and, as from January 2000, Latin America. FPI also acts as an umbrella organisation for its national groups and affiliated industry associations, both through its international and regional offices." ("IFPI's Mission", 2006)

The real question one could ask is whether the actions FPI undertakes do not miss their effect. The Federal Court of Australia accused KaZaA in September 2005 of massive