Piracy and music industry

Development of internet piracy● Napster was the original music sharing website in

1999 where it allowed users to download any other users tracks that they had. But Napster was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit on December 7 th 1999. This resulted in a feud between the RIAA (Recording industry association of America) saying that they couldn't share the music unless people were paying for it in some way, for example a subscription based service like it is now.

● Since Napster was a peer 2 peer transfer network other networks followed as well during the 90s such as Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster. All of these sites were also hit with copyright lawsuits. The only problem with this was that none of the companies were liable for what their users were transferring.

● After this they wanted to go after the clients that were sharing and downloading music but this meant going after people ranging from ages of twelve to forty.

Pirating music today● Most piracy websites need a torrent client such

as uTorrent to allow you to share the files. You will then need to find the file that you want and then download the torrent file and then download the complete file and then you can share the file.

● Most torrent websites use this for downloading and is never changed.

● Some of the most pirated albums are Ed Sheeran's X, Pharrel Williams G I R L, Arctic Monkeys AM and Avicii's True.

Top 10 Piracy websites of 2015

KickassTorrents

Torrentz

ExtraTorrent

Pirate Bay copies and clones

YTS

EZTV

RARBG

Isohunt

1337x

LimeTorrents

Impact on the music industry● The impact of downloading one song illegally

may not seem like much for one person but doing this a million times without compensating any of the people who helped make the song and bring it to people is devastating. One study showed that the yearly loss due to piracy was around $12.5 billion dollars in losses for the US as well as 70,000 jobs being lost and $2 billion in lost wages for workers.

● In 2009 it was recorded that only %37 of music acquired in the US paid for.

● Since Napster emerged in 1999 music sales in the US have dropped by 53% from $14.6 billion to $7 billion in 2011.

Attempts to combat piracy● One attempt to combat piracy was google

removing search results involving copyright infringement, lowering the results of non legal websites so that legal websites are closer to the top.

● Another system is the use of content ID match where you tube searches through databases with copyright content against currently available videos and then this informs the user about people using their music.

● ISP(Internet service providers) have been blocking websites like the pirate bay so that users cannot access to piracy websites. This is relatively easy to bypass with new websites appearing.

● Some artists that are against music piracy are Elton John, Lars Ulrich and James Blunt.

Attempts to combat piracy● One attempt to combat piracy was google

removing search results involving copyright infringement, lowering the results of non legal websites so that legal websites are closer to the top.

● Another system is the use of content ID match where you tube searches through databases with copyright content against currently available videos and then this informs the user about people using their music.

● ISP(Internet service providers) have been blocking websites like the pirate bay so that users cannot access to piracy websites. This is relatively easy to bypass with new websites appearing.

● Some artists that are against music piracy are Elton John, Lars Ulrich and James Blunt.