Online downloading easier than ever despite legal issues
If you live in Syracuse University housing and use AirOrangeX, you should know better than to use peer-to-peer software to download music.
It’s well known that the Recording Industry Association of America monitors the distribution of content on college networks for file-sharing programs. SU students have been sued for illegal downloads in the past.
That has not stopped college students from obtaining music without paying. Many blogs now upload and distribute albums and singles. These are easy to download and play on any computer.
Say you want the new Third Eye Blind CD, as I did about a month ago. You don’t need LimeWire, or an iTunes account, to get it.
Google, on a preliminary level, searches Web sites, images and news articles but uses more options. And if, per-say, your search were to be about a certain album, you may even find a link to download it.
Google, which is allowing more access to free music, also owns YouTube. Through its growth, YouTube is hosting many music videos, which can be embedded onto other Web sites. One of the problems with this freedom is the ability to actually download the video to one’s computer – or even, in the case of a music video, just an MP3 file of the song.
There are numerous sites that allow users to download songs that were intended for online listening purposes from Web sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Pandora Radio.
But is that legal? It’s not the same sort of file sharing that p2p software uses, but it does take profit away from the artists. Ulf Oesterle, an assistant professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries, said not all blog uploads are illegal.
‘Many of the MP3 blogs today, they actually get the music from the publicist or the artist themselves,’ Oesterle said. ‘That’s totally legal and totally fine. However, sometimes bloggers will find a song they like and want to share it.’
In the case that a blogger uploads music it is not authorized to distribute, both the uploader and downloader are at legal risk.
But Oesterle also said that in these cases where a user accesses Web sites to download music, that user is not nearly at the same risk as the developers who create the download loopholes. The extreme surplus of ways to share music digitally has been a concern for the music industry for some time. Now that Internet users can get more music more easily, it poses a greater risk to the industry.
‘It’s going to change the business,’ Oesterle said. ‘If you look at the stats for music sales in the past seven years, you see that [they’re] down. If people aren’t buying music than record labels need to change.’
The fact of the matter is, record labels cannot rely solely on music.
‘It’s stealing from the artist and from the record label,’ Oesterle said. ‘We are in a culture where many people see music as free – especially the college community. So you have to create some sort of financial model to support those trying to make a living.’
Last week, along with a colorful new line of iPods, Apple released the newest version of their media player and store, iTunes 9. One of the new features of iTunes 9 is called ‘Home Sharing’ which allows users to share their music between their own computers using their Apple ID.
But what if I use my neighbor’s Apple ID and we share our music? The software update actually allows you to download music to your computer from someone else’s iTunes Library. It seems as though Apple made it easier to share music as long as you have access to someone’s iTunes account.
‘I wonder how this is going to shape out,’ Oesterle said. ‘I think it is going to start in the college community. You have a friend with 10,000 songs and someone down the hall wants them, they hook it up on the network.’
While the music industry is changing, so are those who listen. Our generation expects music, and many other things, free. And as long as the access remains easy and with little threat from legal action, then why not?
