Music piracy

Music piracy is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent. It has a long history, as Beethoven was afflicted with pirated copies of his music, which reduced the income he could make from publishing. In the contemporary legal environment, it is a form of copyright infringement, which is a civil wrong and, under certain circumstances, even a crime in many countries. The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw much controversy about copyright piracy, regarding the ethics of redistributing media content, how much production and distribution companies in the media were losing, and the very scope of what ought to be considered "piracy"—and cases involving the piracy of music were among the most frequently discussed in the debate.

Music piracy was very limited in the decades prior to the invention of the internet and digital media. With the invention of newer technology that allowed for the piracy process to become less complicated, it became much more common. Users of the web began adding media files to the internet, and prior potential risks and difficulties to pirating music, such as the physicality of the process, were eliminated. It was much easier for people with little to no knowledge of technology and old piracy methods to gather media files.

The first application that demonstrated the implications of music piracy was Napster. Napster enabled users to exchange music files over a common free server without any regard for copyright laws. Napster was quickly shut down after a lawsuit filed by Metallica and a separate lawsuit in regards to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Other music sharing services such as Limewire continued to be a resource to those searching for free music files. These platforms were also removed after a few years of service due to copyright laws and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. After finding some loopholes, piracy began to exist in more legal forms, an example being Pirate Bay. This technical legality was due to the format of the websites and their country of origin and administration. The websites were set up so that the site itself did not host any of the illegal files, but gave the user a map as to where they could access the files. Additionally, in Pirate Bay's case, the website was hosted under Swedish law, where this “map” was not illegal.

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Wikipedia