You open your ears to their music, now listen to artists pleas regarding music piracy and copyright infringement
Names designated with this symbol * have been altered since the content could be sensitive
The privilege of sitting shotgun in your best friend’s car means you are the designated DJ. But what if you were only allowed to play one genre of music every car ride, could you do it? What if you could only listen to one artist? One album?
The world is made up of a cacophony of noises, and June Fusco* has made it her hobby to appreciate and soak up all that sound. Purchasing all of that music can get pretty pricey, especially before the revolutionary age of the iPod and the iPhone. Fusco found a solution, but it only solved her monetary problems.
Fusco, 21, is a student at Winthrop University and an avid music lover. While she is still is a music fanatic, the only difference is that she now purchases her music legally. Back in the early 2000s, her method had been a program called Limewire.
Fusco is only one of countless others who download music without paying for it, robbing artists of their royalties and source of income. Technological innovations have allowed music to become more portable than ever, but it has a downside.
Music trends have shifted from physical CD recordings to digital audio files. John Blewett with IFPI wrote that worldwide people are increasingly engaging with audio streaming. Listing through an audio streaming service has increased 45 percent from 2016, and 90 percent of paid streamers listen to music using a smartphone.
Online music vehicles like YouTube allow people to listen to nearly any song whenever they want.
With this switch to digital files, piracy and copyright infringement issues have heightened.
Young fans continue to stay up to date with music industry trends. Blewett notes that, “13-15 year-olds are highly engaged with music, with 85 percent using streaming services.”
With more people than ever with the ability to access the internet, illegal music streaming is still pertinent. Blewett reports that, “40 percent of consumers access unlicensed music.”
There is so much music in the world being produced, and a variety of outlets to consume them from (the radio, in a store, TV shows) that copies are being illegally replicated and fragments of works are being used without permission. Millions of dollars worth of revenue to musicians, artists and composers have been lost amidst the desire for art and culture.
Numerous applications have been created by programmers to convert links and files into an audio file easily transferable around a group of people.
“Back when I used to illegally download music in the early 2000s, I used Limewire. And it always was ‘virusey,’ it gave me a lot of viruses on my computer. The music wasn’t great quality. Sometimes it cut the song in half or cut out early or had a mix on it. It was really hard to find a good quality song.”
Fusco said the process of illegally downloading music took hours, even a whole day sometimes. “We had a huge dinosaur monitor with the computer station at home, once you downloaded the program Limewire, you would have to continue to wait for it to load, then you would be ready to search a song.”
Once the program was ready, the search part of the operation could begin. Fusco recounted the process of how to download a song with Bad Blood by Taylor Swift
The user would type in the name of the song, “and 100 songs would pop up,” possibly more depending on the songs popularity. After selecting a file, one would listen through the entire song to make sure it was, “good quality,” or didn’t, “cut out before the end.”
She said one had to listen for it if the song was recorded on a cellphone, or that no one was speaking over it. After an appropriate song was chosen, the user would download, drag onto the computer desktop, and then burn it onto a CD.
After taking the CD back out and reinserting it back into the computer, Fusco would download the music to her iPod shuffle, then plug some headphones in and listen to her favorite albums.
Where did the transition from sitting and listening to an artist that you paid for turn into free, intangible, but timely, MP3’s? Stealing an artist’s work can lead to jail time or heavy fines. Furthermore using that work and stealing parts of it to create your own can lead to more legal issues, such as copyright infringement.
June Fusco and Em Leamy talk about their opinions on pirated music and music licensing companies.
What is driving the rise in illegally used creative works?
Jonathan Lee, a researcher for the economics department at Queen’s University, reported that, “extralegal sharing of digital music,” began in 1999 when the service Napster came online. These peer-to-peer service allowed users to “download the music directly” from the other users on the network. Other P2P entities came about in the early 2000’s, such as Gnutella and KaZaA.
Lee observed that some people view music piracy as a form of flattery and free advertisement. The mass network of files would allow people who could not see an artist in concert or lived in more remote regions to experience a variety of sounds and albums that they would otherwise not have discovered. Lee wrote that file sharing, “allows consumers to verify the quality of the product before the purchase,” which in turn could generate more legitimate sales for the artist or record label.
Lee agrees with Fusco that this seemingly ‘free’ music came with a cost, but not a monetary one. Lee reported that a user would have to search through multiple versions of the songs to find one appropriate, “authenticity and quality,” which required the tedious process of downloading, listening, downloading another file and repeat. The length of time one had to wait to download a song depending on the quality of the user’s internet connection. A poor connection could lead to hours of wait time.
The law has not yet caught with with the pace of technology. Where once the only way to listen to an artist was through a tangible medium, now people can find countless variations and remixes on numerous different outlets.
People are no longer crediting artists for their work. Creative expressions, once a luxury only afforded to a few, has slowly become mundane and undervalued as technological advances have made music widely accessible.
Stephen Witt wrote in his book, “How Music Got Free,” that, “piracy was a social phenomenon,” and all walks of life could participate. He reported that the real secret to digital piracy success was that the Internet was made of people.
With more and more music being created, and more people on the planet than ever before, everyone wants a chance to experience a taste.
Piracy Among College Students
Sheehan, Brian, et al quoted Burst Media that more than, “30 percent of college students spend at least 10 hours on the Internet,” on a weekly basis. “Whereas 20 percent spend 20 hours or more.”
Sheehan, Brian, et al quoted Pfanner from the, “New York Times,” that, “95 percent of music downloads are pirated.”
The authors reiterated from a 2008 IFPI Digital Music Report that estimates of lost revenue from illegally downloading music is at, “ $3.7 billion annually in the United States.”
The authors paraphrase Hennig-Thurau, Henning, and Sattler, from the, “Journal of Marketing,” regarding what motivates young adults to pirate movies. There are six specific utilities observed for movie piracy: transaction utility (the ability to get a ‘better deal’), mobility utility (ability to store a digital copy on a mobile device), storage utility (not having to acquire a physical copy), anti-industry utility (desire to reduce funds to companies), social utility (increased interactions with peers) and collection utility (a large collection of movies will boost status).
When is it appropriate to use a piece of music or copy several lines from a play for a school project and when is it piracy and copyright infringement?
Music licensing was established so performers and artists could be paid through royalties every time one of their songs was played. Businesses that want to play music in their stores or at events can purchase a business license from companies like Spotify or Pandora, which pay their own fees to artists and producers.
Dr. Nathaniel Frederick, assistant professor of mass communication at Winthrop University, said that works that fall within the public domain can be used in any way the user wants. Outside of that spectrum is infringement.
“If you copyright a song, it does not matter how much you use,” Frederick said. “If it is the central part of the work, you’ve stolen the material. This applies to songs, books and movies.”
Fair use is a type of copyright that, when the original is properly attributed, a person will be allowed to use, but it is not yet in the public domain. An example of this would be a teacher using material for a lesson plan or teaching purposes.
Frederick sees the issue from a media law perspective. As well, he knows what it is like to live in a time of instantaneous music and experienced only being able to listen to a song if you owned the entire physical album.
“Paying for a song was once compared to paying for a performance. Take the juke box for example: You put a quarter in and choose the song, and it’s your own personal concert,” Frederick said. “But you still weren’t able to own just one, individual song. If you wanted to listen to one song, you had to buy the entire album.”
Through technological innovations, the way music is facilitated has changed dramatically from the large, hulking, multi-colored boxes to flat, mirrored disks to a weightless medium, the mp3 file.
Working in the Theatre
When people think music infringement, they mainly think about popular songs or artists that are or have trended. Musical composers and screenwriters are afflicted by the same dilemmas that haunt singers and songwriters.
Growing up singing in her church choir and performing in high school, Emery Carr is no stranger to the music and theatre world.
“Every piece of music that we ever used for any musicals or pieces that we did for choir we had to purchase the music in order to make copies of it to hand out in class,” said Carr.
In a performance of, “Phantom of the Opera,” Carr recalls that her teacher had to purchase an individual copy of the script for every cast member due to the musicals vast and complex interaction of scores and song.
“Piracy is when you don’t have permission to duplicate the music or make copies of anything. If you buy the rights and have the permission from the composer or writer, that works,” stated Carr. “If you’re going to have people pay to watch you perform a work, then you should definitely purchase the rights.
The concept of music on loan
YouTube is a digital distributor of music and it is illegal to make digital copies off of it. Sites like this are exempt from copyright laws, for it is the individual person who made the copy that would be penalized.
Nelson Granados, a contributor to Forbes, wrote that, “piracy hurts emerging artists as much as established artists.” Regardless of the artistic medium, everyone in the industry is vulnerable to having their work illegally copied.
Granados quoted Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, saying, “piracy arguably hurts independent creators who are struggling to make it.” Photographers, producers, musicians and even game developers are at risk of losing their careers before they begin.
Granados reported that Congress was not prepared to deal with the legal complications that came with the quickly developing world of technology. With millions of files worth of content being uploaded each day, “service providers receive over a million notices,” of alleged infringement.
Emily Leamy, 21, is a student at Winthrop University. Before arriving at college she was a classically trained vocalist for 12 years, singing opera, musical theatre and jazz. Purchasing and working with copyright in theatre production is not a foreign concept to Leamy.
She agrees with Fusco that music is so easily accessible and comes at a low monthly cost that the payoff is better than the penalty.
Facilitators like Apple Music and YouTube have acted as electronic highways to help people find music and media. “Art should be available to people,” Leamy said when applauding these companies strategies. They charge low rates so that consumers can access nearly every song at the press of a button, and it won’t weigh a thing. “It shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a right to have accessibility to art.”
After selecting a song on YouTube, the website will generate a column of suggested songs for the user.
Fusco is now a proud subscriber to Apple Music, and supports the idea that artists should be rewarded for their trade. She said the tedious process of illegally downloading is not worth it now that, “it’s so much easier,” to access music.
She opened up Apple Music on her phone and began musing through her saved songs. Fusco said she is now interested in how much music vendors are paying artists for business subscriptions.
“Spotify doesn’t give as much money to artists as Apple Music does. Some artists, like Taylor Swift and Beyonce, don’t want to be on Spotify because they get paid less. But again, you’re still getting something for people to just listen to you,” Fusco said.
She selected a Grace Potter song from the screen and, “Somebody Fix Me,” started playing languidly from the speakers.