Dealing with Digital Piracy

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorUniversity, Master's February 2008

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I. Executive Summary As digital music and the Internet are becoming more and more mainstream, the music industry faces a serious, though not unique, problem: how to adapt the industry?s established and profitable business model in the face of these new technologies. Of particular concern to the recording industry is piracy. While individuals could certainly make copies of cassettes and CDs, widespread distribution of such physical pirated materials would be expensive and time consuming. But digital music offers anyone with a computer and an Internet connection the ability to disseminate music to tens, hundreds or thousands of others at little cost. While many record companies have attempted to handle this issue by distributing its music with copy protection, users have found ways to flout these security measures. Rather than adapting to changing technologies, the music industry has looked to the legal system, typically through copyright lawsuits, to protect its increasingly outdated business model.

This paper attempts to analyze how the music industry could choose to deal with a company that is selling digital music out of Russia with no copy protection and without copyright permissions and whether there are options available to the music industry outside of the courtroom.

The music industry is riddled with problems that are failing to prevent the music piracy. The consumers are utilizing the illegal music because they do not feel that this type of stealing is as a big a deal as stealing a physical object. The customers also are choosing the illegal solutions due to them being dissatisfied with the existing solutions. The barriers to technology have also been lowered allowing for the piracy. The record industry needs to implement multiple solutions in order to attack the issues. The music industry should continue with lawsuits and lobbying of governments to prevent digital music...