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MCT Direct |
Justin Smith
Entertainment Writer
Music is undeniably an essential form of communication. It provides people with entertainment, community and a soundtrack to life.
Some music fans have gone to great lengths to get their favorite tunes for free.
The illegal tradition of music piracy spans back to the first half of the 20th century.
The Recording Industry Association of America defines music piracy as the “illegal duplication and distribution of sound recordings.”
The RIAA is a trade group of record labels and distributors that release 90 percent of legal sound recordings in the U.S., according to the RIAA Web site.
Since 1952, the RIAA has worked on new and revised U.S. copyright laws, a 300-year-old tradition.
From early sound recording laws to the famous Napster case in the late ’90s, the RIAA has tried to combat illegal music recording and keep artists paid.
One of the most popular ways of getting illegal music over the past decade has been through Internet file sharing on peer-to-peer networks. This has included the rising piracy trend of leaking unreleased albums.
“Piracy may even affect the sale of titles before they hit the marketplace, when bootleggers are able to obtain promotional copies ahead of release,” according to the 2003 book “This Business of Music: The Definitive Guide to the Music Industry.”
For example, The Arcade Fire’s second full-length album, “Neon Bible,” is due out March 6 but has been available on file sharing sites for at least the past month.
Since January, Ruckus, a “premier college-only multimedia service,” has launched a campaign to offer free, legal music to college students.
“The major record labels would like to combat piracy on college campuses via peer-to-peer networks,” according to the blog at www.ruckusnetwork.com.
“Ruckus Network has been authorized by major record labels to offer a catalog of nearly 2.5 million tracks for free to anyone with a dot-edu e-mail address.”
A drawback of Ruckus is that downloaded tracks will not play on the Apple iPod, according to a January New York Times article.
The tracks come in Windows Media audio format and cannot be converted by iTunes for use on the iPod or the MP3 player.
Even with this restriction, Michael J. Bebel, president and CEO of Ruckus, was still optimistic.
“Even iPod users on campus will use Ruckus because they can find music they like before they buy it from Apple or get it another way,” he said.
Bebel was previously responsible for overseeing the operations of Roxio’s Napster division, according to his biography on Ruckus’ Web site.
Ruckus keeps its music free and legal by financing its efforts through selling ad space on the Web site.
The most recent data from RIAA shows that revenue totals for all music sales of the 2006 midyear were $4.9 billion, a 6 percent decrease from the 2005 midyear total of $5.2 billion.
The decrease has been attributed to online file sharing.
Online digital music sales, however, show midyear 2006 revenue totals of $417 million, an 87 percent increase over the 2005 revenue totals of $223 million.
The Internet has made obtaining legal and illegal music easier; however, piracy extends back well before the Internet existed.
Since the vinyl LP album was introduced in 1948, listeners have tried to dodge the normal avenues of acquiring music by using dark alleys.
Before the popularity of computers and the Internet, the main way music pirates obtained their illegal music was through bootlegging and counterfeiting.
The RIAA defines bootlegging as “the unauthorized recordings of live concerts, or musical broadcasts on radio or television,” while it defines counterfeiting as “the unauthorized recordings of the prerecorded sound as well as the unauthorized duplication of original artwork, label, trademark and packaging.”
“Bob Dylan is easily the most bootlegged artist in the world,” according to a February 2006 essay in Popular Music and Society.
“It would be a lifetime effort to comb through, much less listen carefully to, all the Bob Dylan material available in the digital underground,” the essay continued.
Sound recording didn’t get copyright protection until February 1972, according to www.copyright.gov.
According to the 1969 Popular Music and Society essay, the first Bob Dylan bootleg album, “The Great White Wonder,” surfaced and received some radio airplay.
In 1991, to satisfy the demand for the bootlegs, Columbia Records, Dylan’s record label, released a three-volume “Bootleg Series.”
The RIAA’s latest measure to build awareness of the illegal nature of online music piracy is a “voluntary, government-sanctioned anti-piracy warning seal,” to be placed on copyrighted music, according to the RIAA Web site.
“It is our hope that when consumers see the new FBI warning on the music they purchase, both physically and online, they will take the time to learn the do’s and don’ts of copying and uploading to the Internet,” said Brad Buckles, RIAA executive vice president for anti-piracy, at a Los Angeles news conference unveiling the new seal.
But no matter the restrictions or the media format, throughout the years, music fans have obtained recordings of their favorite musicians any way they can, legally or illegally.
Some music fans have gone to great lengths to get their favorite tunes for free.
The illegal tradition of music piracy spans back to the first half of the 20th century.
The Recording Industry Association of America defines music piracy as the “illegal duplication and distribution of sound recordings.”
The RIAA is a trade group of record labels and distributors that release 90 percent of legal sound recordings in the U.S., according to the RIAA Web site.
Since 1952, the RIAA has worked on new and revised U.S. copyright laws, a 300-year-old tradition.
From early sound recording laws to the famous Napster case in the late ’90s, the RIAA has tried to combat illegal music recording and keep artists paid.
One of the most popular ways of getting illegal music over the past decade has been through Internet file sharing on peer-to-peer networks. This has included the rising piracy trend of leaking unreleased albums.
“Piracy may even affect the sale of titles before they hit the marketplace, when bootleggers are able to obtain promotional copies ahead of release,” according to the 2003 book “This Business of Music: The Definitive Guide to the Music Industry.”
For example, The Arcade Fire’s second full-length album, “Neon Bible,” is due out March 6 but has been available on file sharing sites for at least the past month.
Since January, Ruckus, a “premier college-only multimedia service,” has launched a campaign to offer free, legal music to college students.
“The major record labels would like to combat piracy on college campuses via peer-to-peer networks,” according to the blog at www.ruckusnetwork.com.
“Ruckus Network has been authorized by major record labels to offer a catalog of nearly 2.5 million tracks for free to anyone with a dot-edu e-mail address.”
A drawback of Ruckus is that downloaded tracks will not play on the Apple iPod, according to a January New York Times article.
The tracks come in Windows Media audio format and cannot be converted by iTunes for use on the iPod or the MP3 player.
Even with this restriction, Michael J. Bebel, president and CEO of Ruckus, was still optimistic.
“Even iPod users on campus will use Ruckus because they can find music they like before they buy it from Apple or get it another way,” he said.
Bebel was previously responsible for overseeing the operations of Roxio’s Napster division, according to his biography on Ruckus’ Web site.
Ruckus keeps its music free and legal by financing its efforts through selling ad space on the Web site.
The most recent data from RIAA shows that revenue totals for all music sales of the 2006 midyear were $4.9 billion, a 6 percent decrease from the 2005 midyear total of $5.2 billion.
The decrease has been attributed to online file sharing.
Online digital music sales, however, show midyear 2006 revenue totals of $417 million, an 87 percent increase over the 2005 revenue totals of $223 million.
The Internet has made obtaining legal and illegal music easier; however, piracy extends back well before the Internet existed.
Since the vinyl LP album was introduced in 1948, listeners have tried to dodge the normal avenues of acquiring music by using dark alleys.
Before the popularity of computers and the Internet, the main way music pirates obtained their illegal music was through bootlegging and counterfeiting.
The RIAA defines bootlegging as “the unauthorized recordings of live concerts, or musical broadcasts on radio or television,” while it defines counterfeiting as “the unauthorized recordings of the prerecorded sound as well as the unauthorized duplication of original artwork, label, trademark and packaging.”
“Bob Dylan is easily the most bootlegged artist in the world,” according to a February 2006 essay in Popular Music and Society.
“It would be a lifetime effort to comb through, much less listen carefully to, all the Bob Dylan material available in the digital underground,” the essay continued.
Sound recording didn’t get copyright protection until February 1972, according to www.copyright.gov.
According to the 1969 Popular Music and Society essay, the first Bob Dylan bootleg album, “The Great White Wonder,” surfaced and received some radio airplay.
In 1991, to satisfy the demand for the bootlegs, Columbia Records, Dylan’s record label, released a three-volume “Bootleg Series.”
The RIAA’s latest measure to build awareness of the illegal nature of online music piracy is a “voluntary, government-sanctioned anti-piracy warning seal,” to be placed on copyrighted music, according to the RIAA Web site.
“It is our hope that when consumers see the new FBI warning on the music they purchase, both physically and online, they will take the time to learn the do’s and don’ts of copying and uploading to the Internet,” said Brad Buckles, RIAA executive vice president for anti-piracy, at a Los Angeles news conference unveiling the new seal.
But no matter the restrictions or the media format, throughout the years, music fans have obtained recordings of their favorite musicians any way they can, legally or illegally.
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