With the fast-paced lifestyle we are accustomed to living, the days of going to the local music store to purchase a new CD are something of the past. Instead it is possible to sit down at a computer and download music directly to an mp3, ipod, or other electronic device. You are not forced to purchase the whole CD, you can pick and choose the songs you wish to purchase and pay for them only. Downloading music is a great thing to do; however the easiest way to do it is illegal. The hardest part of downloading music is knowing which service to use, LEGALLY.
A judge ruled in favor of 13 music companies in a copyright case against the ever-so popular LimeWire. LimeWire is an online file-sharing service that uses peer-to-peer technology allowing music and other files to be shared via the internet. The distribution of the recordings through LimeWire competes with artist’s sales, and is just down right unfair.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is trying to prevent anyone from downloading music illegally and the average person, if found guilty could pay a very big fine. The safest thing to do, to protect yourself is to download music legally. There are several legal music downloading sites such as: iTunes, rhapsody, amazon, pressplay.com, and musicnet.com. Although legal music download networks are great the downfalls are: some charge $0.99 - $1.99 per song and they have applied DRM to the songs. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. This is an invisible layer of software that bodyguards a computer file and limits what you can and can't do with it. For example, you can buy songs from iTunes but are only able to copy to five computers. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple says he is trying to strip songs of DRM’s.
For full story about the LimeWire lawsuit:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100512/tc_afp/usitmusicjusticeinternetpiracylimewire
For more about DRM’s and music piracy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koOH9qxay08
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625209,00.html#ixzz0pBbbpoq2
Indeed the sharing and purchasing of digital music, or anything digital for that matter, is a very big deal today. DRM, in my opinion however, is proving to be way more of an annoyance and hindrance than it's actually protecting the music or digital files. There are ALWAYS ways around DRM protected files, or anything that is online for that matter. If it's digital, there is a work around someone will find. People could go as far as to literally re-record an entire album on their computer through various software packages available, and then re-upload the music that way that would have no DRM whatsoever on the files. The quality of the music would be decreased, but the music is still there.
ReplyDelete-Chase Coleman