The Music Industry - Legal Aspect - Essay Example

? The Music Industry The Music Industry [Institute’s The Music Industry Internet has created revolution in nearly all industries, in which music industry forms a crucial part. The music industry focuses on not only the business side, but the creative aspect, as well. Therefore, the music industry forms the center of many legal issues, such as copyright law, name protection, recording and music publishing agreements and much more. Internet has put these legal issues sharply into focus, because internet is such medium, which has led to huge infringement of copyright, because of different websites offering music, without proper due to the original owner (Gorder, Masur, n.d). Before the internet had arrived, the distribution of music was done through a few standards. These included CDs in the 1980s and the 1990s and before that, tapes formed one of the important mediums for the transmission of music to the final listener. All these standards had one feature in common. These mediums were traceable, secure and physical. Music theft and infringement was not common. Proper proceeds were given to the recording company, and henceforth to the artist. However, the sprawl of the internet led to websites, which started offering free music, which was available for download for everyone (Burgelman, Year). In this regard, the music industry started losing quite a lot in revenues. Some worrisome statistics will properly paint a picture of the loss of the music industry, because of an increase in digital media. Since peer-to peer, networking sites have evolved, around 47 percent of the music sales in the United States have dropped. Moreover, internet users consume around $7 billion to $20 billion of the music, which is completely pirated, and the proceeds do not reach the right owner of the music. Around 30 billion songs illegally downloaded on the internet, through different websites in a span of five years (RIAA, n.d). Such statistics shed light to the concerns of the music industry, which has rapidly lost so much because of this illegal download of music. Therefore, the paper attempts to discuss the business law issue, covering many of the legal aspects of the music industry. Moreover, it also quotes some examples of lawsuits against the theft of the music and how these lawsuits worked out at the end. Lastly, it tries to explain solutions to this problem in this dynamic and globalized world, where information is shared in nano-seconds. Concerning the legal issues involved in the music industry, it is important to discuss the matter of copyrights initially. Copyrighting is a way of providing legal protection, given to different forms of art, especially musical compositions such as lyrics, records and songs. In the music industry, the issue of copyrighting includes protecting the music itself (which includes lyrics and a melody) and the recording (such as mp3s, CDs, cassettes, DAT and other form of recording). If the music is recorded on a tangible medium, the creator has copyright protection. It is more prudent to register with the Copyright office, to gain maximum protection (Lawyers for the Creative Art, n.d). In this regard, distribution of music on the internet, without obtaining the permission from the original owner becomes a copyright infringement. The United States Copyright Act states that the protection of a musical recording applies to sound recording. The reproduction of a particular sound recording forms the exclusive right of the Copyright owner. Infringement occurs when another party reproduces the musical recordings, without the permission of Copyright owner. Much of the music on the internet is obtained and transmitted without this permission. Therefore, it becomes illegal. However, not all the websites on the internet transmit the music illegally. These websites include iTunes, Rhapsody, MusicNet, and Liquid Digital Media among others. When an individual downloads music off this website, he or she has to pay a certain amount to the website (Bass, n.d). The mp3 technology or the digital technology has made it extremely easy for people to post music on the internet. It has become the ‘bane of the music industry’. Mp3 uses a technology, which reduces a file to one-tenth of its original size, which enables it to be stored easily on computer disks, and portable hard drives, without losing the fine sound reproduction. Many musicians have uploaded their music on the internet themselves, which means that their songs downloaded off from the internet are not an infringement. However, as long as different websites are available for downloading music, without obtaining proper permission from the Copyright owner, the infringement of the law will continue on (Powers, 2002). It is also imperative to understand the starting of the phenomena. Diamond Multimedia introduced diamond Rio in 1998, which led to inexpensive listening of stolen music from the internet. Even though, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Diamond Multimedia, but it did not win the case. Moreover, Napster was eventually introduced, which had broken Copyright Law extensively. The RIAA brought lawsuits against Napster. However, Napster argued that it was only promoting friendly sharing between members of the community; therefore, there was no infringement. In the US court initially, Napster was ordered suspension. However, eventually the judged changed the decision. The judge ordered Napster to include the individual file names of copyright artists, if they wanted to stay in business (Powers, 2002). Therefore, it has been observed that since the digital revolution has started, lawsuits have been filed against these websites, which has perhaps led to minor changes. The music industry has actually joined hands with these websites, in return for a subscription. The reason for this includes the fact that they cannot beat such a large phenomena. They have no other option (Power, year). Nevertheless, the sprawling of the digital media, in mp3 format has led to extreme revenue loss for the music industry. A recent example of a lawsuit includes that of against LimeWire, done in 2010. Eight music publishers have sued LimeWire for the “pervasive online infringement”. Copyright statues also demanded for statutory damages of up to $150, 000 per violation. The music publishers asked for the freezing of assets of the company, and eventually the shutdown of this company (Vijayan, 2010). After a nine month legal battle, the battle ended with good terms on both sides. Therefore, LimeWire did not do extremely badly in the lawsuit, even though it had deprived many music-publishing companies of their revenues for a prolonged period (DeCarlo, 2011). Even, if LimeWire closes down completely, another peer-to-peer sharing network will eventually develop. It is extremely important to discuss the ways the music industry has handled all these copyright infringement issues. It has pursued different strategies to battle with this ‘frightening technology’. Many recording companies have allowed small websites under license agreements to offer digital music. The RIAA is working towards the development of a digital music format, which would act superior to the mp3. The RIAA has also used search spiders to locate websites selling their music and have tried obtaining royalties, under License Agreements from these websites. At various times, during lawsuits, many U. S courts had ruled in favor of the websites, instead of the music publishing company. For example, eBay was not taken to be infringing these laws because it could not stop many of its customers from posting audio and video versions of the music on the internet (Powers, 2002). However, many people see the future of the music industry in great decline, if they continue to rely on lawsuits. This is because they have not won many lawsuits, only the one the paper mentions about LimeWire. Additionally, different websites get away from the law with different arguments. In the future, experts such as Powers (2002) state that there will always be a struggle between the owners’ copyrights and easy duplication data by different websites on the internet. Moreover, the copyright is not only the major issue, but music piracy, as well. This is the reproduction of the music on CDs and DVDs. The case of piracy has become a moral and ethical one, for a number of people. The recording companies have reacted by putting trailers in the CDs and not giving off the same quality of the song. However, much of these issues will not work eventually. However, this does not mean that music industry does not have a right to put some regulations in order to protect their copyrights. The music industry can ask ethically for a law to be imposed upon the technology industry, which facilitates music piracy. However, some people also state that the music industry has witnessed only a drop in their revenue, which could be explained by any other factor. They proclaim that the music industry use LimeWire and websites such as Napster as scapegoats because they have no other alternative to blame their problems on (Justman, 2003). However, this is the argument posed by only a few people in the customer arena. The purpose of mentioning it here is to clearly state different moral rules people think of to justify their stealing and piracy. According to any Copyright Law, music infringement is a crime. However, the music industry has also realized that it has gotten cornered from nearly all sources. Lawsuits get ridiculously expensive, and often music companies have to pay much in legal damages. Therefore, the music industry has proclaimed to ‘abandon mass lawsuits’. This has been a shift in the strategy for the music industry, for it had previously charged lawsuits against 35,000 people since 2003. The Recording Industry Associated of America has come up with the plan to cooperate with Internet Service Providers (ISP). This is truly an innovative plan. Preliminary agreements have been revising with a number of ISPs, which state that the ISP will send out an email to the providers, if the ISP finds that a provider’s customers are making music available for others online. The customer can get a pop out, stating that they are downloading illegal internet. However, if they continue to do so, then they will perhaps get slower internet, consequently. If this problem persists, the ISPs can cut off the internet service altogether. Nevertheless, it still does not mean that music industry will completely give up lawsuits against those people, who have been continually conducting heavy file sharing (Mcbride, Smith, 2008). Therefore, the future of the music industry seems bleak because we live in a globalized world, where it has gotten increasingly difficult to keep track of all the people, around the world. However, if some measures taken in future, then the music industry can recover some of its lost revenue or save some of their potential revenue. Lawsuits are expensive, and they have not worked much in favor for the music industry. References BASS, L. (n.d.). Music Downloading 101: Legal Issues Related to Downloading Music.Columbus Trademark, Business & Entertainment Attorney | Leon Bass. Retrieved August 15, 2011, from http://www.lawbass.com/LawNotes-download.html DeCarlo, M. (2011). LimeWire reaches settlement with music publishers - TechSpot News.TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis. Retrieved August 15, 2011, from http://www.techspot.com/news/42728-limewire-reaches-settlement-with-music-publishers.html Gorder, D., & Masur, S. (n.d.). Legal Aspects of the Music Industry - Copyright Law, Music Contracts. Online Courses and Programs in Music Production, Guitar, Songwriting, Music Business, & Music Theory | Berkleemusic.com. Retrieved August 15, 2011, from http://www.berkleemusic.com/school/course?course_item_id=1310779&usca Lawyers for the Creative Arts. (n.d.). Legal issues involved in the music industry. Google Docs. Retrieved August 18, 2011, from docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Xu8spgWkPxYJ:www.law-arts.org/pdf/Legal_Issues_in_the_Music_Industry.pdf+law+issues+regarding+music+industry&hl=en&gl=pk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjRVVgPk0zLWdEYj7kF-NVD_IpMeD87bBZa25C7vZO6_ McBride, S., & Smith, E. (2008). Music Industry to Abandon Mass Lawsuits. The Wall Street Journal-Technology. Retrieved August 15, 2011, from online.wsj.com/article/SB12296603 Powers, D. (2002). Posting Pictures, Music and Video. The Internet legal guide: everything you need to know when doing business online(pp. 40-43). New York: John Wiley and Sons RIAA - Recording Industry Association of America. (n.d.).RIAA - Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved August 15, 2011, from http://www.riaa.com/faq.php Vijayan, J. (2010). Music industry hits LimeWire with yet another lawsuit - Computerworld.Computerworld - IT news, features, blogs, tech reviews, career advice. Retrieved August 15, 2011, from http://www.computerworld.com/ Read More