For the first time since 1999, which was the last time in which the music industry saw some form of growth, we are seeing some form of increase in the sales within the industry. From then the music industry has seen a decline in sales which is mainly caused by the use of P2P torrenting sites such as ThePirateBay and KAT, but this decline may have finally stopped as recorded music sales have inched up 0.3 percent. If this growth was to continue the predictions will be coming true as last year digital sales have increased by 9%. People have been attesting this growth in the music industry to the availability of the now prevalent ad-funded services such as Spotify, Vevo, Youtube and Grooveshark, all of these sites allowing people to listen to music for either a monthly subscription or for free with adverts interlaced between songs which the revenue is then paid out to the rights holders of the songs on the platforms. So even though we have seen just a tiny growth in the music industry for the first time in a long while I do believe that this shows that online digital means of sharing music such as Spotify Etc are the way forward for the music industry as even people who admit to pirating music have said that the availability of free online streaming even with ads is one of the main reasons that they have stopped pirating minions.
Secondly as the music industry as usual has been struggling to combat the rising threat of Piracy in the industry, which has been happening since the late 1990's with the rise of broadband internet and Napster, the only way in which the industry has fought back has been through suing 11 year old children and 90 year old women who don't even own a PC. But now the music and film industry have teamed up with five of the major US internet service providers (ISP) and have launched the new six-strike Copyright Alert System. This new system works by the MPAA and the RIAA monitoring peer-to-peer file sharing sites (E.g. torrent sites such as ThePirateBay) and if they catch people sharing copyrighted material they will record the users internet protocol address (IP) and then send it on to the ISP. The ISP's, who are currently Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cablevision, will then send the customer who had that IP a series of six escalating warnings. First strike is a simple notice, next comes the acknowledgement in which the user will confirm that they have been warned, and lastly is a sanction which can be internet restrictions (Capping Upload/Download Speeds) or watching a video about piracy. Even though in practise this system sounds like it could work I myself do not believe that this new system is going to stop/deter anyone from pirating in any way. There have been many attempts to stop online piracy such as CISPA and SOPA, all of which have failed in everyway as people will go to extreme lengths to keep the internet as free as possible, and even if the new proposed system were to be implemented people would find a way around it as they have always done be this in the form of a proxy server or using a TOR client to browse what has been dubbed the underground internet to get the products that they desire. Because of all of these reasons I believe that this new system will crash and burn without even denting the online piracy scene slightly.
No comments:
Post a Comment