HELP!!!!
I cant figure out if this stupid article is biased or not and what the tone is.. if someone could help i will be very grateful!!! THANKS!!!!!!
"
It's good to share, right? Well, it's gotten complicated, as digital technology leapfrogs past our laws and conventions.
The music industry says that what he is doing is illegal, but Dan Langlitz, 20, a junior at Pennsylvania State University, sees nothing wrong with downloading music from the Internet on the high-speed access lines at the university student center.
"It's not something you feel guilty about doing," he says. "You don't get the feeling it's illegal because it's so easy." He held an MP3 player in his hand. "They sell these things, the sites are there. Why is it illegal?"
Langlitz's attitude, multiplied millions of times across the country, is big trouble for the record industry, and it could be for the film and television industries as well, where the problem is currently smaller but growing.
The bigger issue is that a decade into the digital revolution, a growing number of Americans have come to believe that Internet content--from songs and software, to newspaper and magazine articles and term papers--is free for the asking and that it is perfectly fine to share it with others. And in some cases, that's all true.
But most Internet file sharing is illegal, and the record companies are working to get that message out: Last month, the industry followed up on its September lawsuits against 261 people accused of illegally downloading music by notifying another 204 people that they would be next.
The basic problem is that advances in technology have leapfrogged past laws and societal conventions developed for earlier, less advanced technologies. The ability to download at will has raised fundamental questions about fair payment to artists, the ownership and control of art and other kinds of content, and the rights of consumers who buy and use that content.
"Law, technology and ethics are not in sync right now," says Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican. "I presume these lawsuits are having some impact, but they're not solving the problem."
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
The record industry argues that sharing songs online is like stealing a CD from a record store. But to many Americans, file sharing seems more like taping a song off the radio. The truth, copyright experts say, may lie somewhere in between.
The basic boundaries are clear. Copyright law permits people to copy recordings and distribute them to family members and friends, as long as they have purchased the recordings. But it is illegal to distribute recordings that have not been purchased, even to family and friends. It is also illegal to distribute recordings--even those that have been purchased--to strangers.
Part of the issue for many downloaders (besides a fondness for getting things free) is a belief that the record industry is trying to take away their ability to make copies of music to use personally and to share with friends.
Added to that is resentment many feel toward big record labels, which music fans variously accuse of charging too much for their CDs and producing bad music.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of communications studies at New York University, says he tells his students that distaste for record-company practices is not a justification for making unauthorized copies of their music. At the same time he also questions some of the record-company rhetoric about music theft.
"It would be nice to stop demonizing people who think they're doing reasonable, legitimate things in their homes, and stop demonizing people who are trying to make a living and recoup an investment," he says.
The recording industry has faced copying problems in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s, cassette tape made copying easy, but the tapes' poor quality kept them from posing a serious threat. The real trouble came with digital technology in the 1990s: Downloading made it possible for individuals to copy tunes with almost perfect fidelity, and then make their copies available to millions of other users.
Downloading, therefore, has been nothing less than a revolution in how music is distributed--legally and illegally.
"The Web eliminates two thirds of the cost factors," says Richard Kurin of the Smithsonian Institution. "You don't have to produce a hard product, and you don't have a middleman....The Net has tremendous implications. The big industry question is: How do you handle those implications?"
EARLIER TECHNOLOGIES
Copy and patent rights are covered in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution. (Noah Webster, who created the first American dictionary, lobbied state legislatures and Congress for passage of the first copyright laws during the late 1700s.)
This is not the first time that advances in technology have created problems for copyright holders. For example, after radio stations began broadcasting recorded music instead of live performances in the 1920s, musicians went on strike until they were guaranteed royalties--small payments for each use of their recorded work. And it's likely that ways of dealing with digital music and other digital content will eventually be found, as they were for earlier technologies.
Even now, there are musicians who side with downloaders, and many owners of smaller record labels--who have less money for advertising and promotion than the conglomerates--say that file sharing helps them build word-of-mouth for the lesser-known artists they tend to produce.
But some artists oppose downloading outright, while others are ambivalent, concerned about loss of income, but reluctant to offend their fans.
Record-industry officials say the lawsuits against downloaders are meant to educate the public that downloading is illegal, and are more an effort to contain file swapping than to wipe it out.
"What we're trying to drive for is an environment in which legitimate online music can flourish," says Mitch Bainwol, the chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, which brought the suits. And getting people to pay for online music has gotten a boost recently from services like Apple Computer's iTunes, which sells songs online for 99 cents. Apple says iTunes sold 10 million songs in its first four months.
A CONFUSED OUTLOOK
For now, however, the battle goes on. Downloading from KaZaA, the most popular file-sharing software, dropped 41 percent between June--when the record companies began talking about lawsuits--and September, according to Nielsen/ Net Ratings. But 3.9 million people still used KaZaA during the week of September 15.
The music industry might take heart from a recent New York Times/CBS News poll in which only 14 percent of respondents said downloading was always acceptable, while 44 percent approved of occasional file sharing with friends or acquaintances with music from a TB they had purchased.
But as long as technology makes the illegal behavior so easy--and when for many people, it doesn't "feel" illegal--the record companies will need to do more than sue.
"The record industry needs to win back the hearts and minds of record buyers, because they can't win a technology war," says Eric Garland, the chief executive of Big Champagne, which tracks Internet usage.
Many downloaders would appear to agree and remain unimpressed by record-company pronouncements and threats: "How many people are they suing?" asked Carlo Lutz, 13, a student at Bronx High School of Science in New York, as he listened on the subway to rap music he had uploaded to his MP3 player. "There are millions of us," he added. "It's only a drop in the bucket." "
"
It's good to share, right? Well, it's gotten complicated, as digital technology leapfrogs past our laws and conventions.
The music industry says that what he is doing is illegal, but Dan Langlitz, 20, a junior at Pennsylvania State University, sees nothing wrong with downloading music from the Internet on the high-speed access lines at the university student center.
"It's not something you feel guilty about doing," he says. "You don't get the feeling it's illegal because it's so easy." He held an MP3 player in his hand. "They sell these things, the sites are there. Why is it illegal?"
Langlitz's attitude, multiplied millions of times across the country, is big trouble for the record industry, and it could be for the film and television industries as well, where the problem is currently smaller but growing.
The bigger issue is that a decade into the digital revolution, a growing number of Americans have come to believe that Internet content--from songs and software, to newspaper and magazine articles and term papers--is free for the asking and that it is perfectly fine to share it with others. And in some cases, that's all true.
But most Internet file sharing is illegal, and the record companies are working to get that message out: Last month, the industry followed up on its September lawsuits against 261 people accused of illegally downloading music by notifying another 204 people that they would be next.
The basic problem is that advances in technology have leapfrogged past laws and societal conventions developed for earlier, less advanced technologies. The ability to download at will has raised fundamental questions about fair payment to artists, the ownership and control of art and other kinds of content, and the rights of consumers who buy and use that content.
"Law, technology and ethics are not in sync right now," says Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican. "I presume these lawsuits are having some impact, but they're not solving the problem."
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
The record industry argues that sharing songs online is like stealing a CD from a record store. But to many Americans, file sharing seems more like taping a song off the radio. The truth, copyright experts say, may lie somewhere in between.
The basic boundaries are clear. Copyright law permits people to copy recordings and distribute them to family members and friends, as long as they have purchased the recordings. But it is illegal to distribute recordings that have not been purchased, even to family and friends. It is also illegal to distribute recordings--even those that have been purchased--to strangers.
Part of the issue for many downloaders (besides a fondness for getting things free) is a belief that the record industry is trying to take away their ability to make copies of music to use personally and to share with friends.
Added to that is resentment many feel toward big record labels, which music fans variously accuse of charging too much for their CDs and producing bad music.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of communications studies at New York University, says he tells his students that distaste for record-company practices is not a justification for making unauthorized copies of their music. At the same time he also questions some of the record-company rhetoric about music theft.
"It would be nice to stop demonizing people who think they're doing reasonable, legitimate things in their homes, and stop demonizing people who are trying to make a living and recoup an investment," he says.
The recording industry has faced copying problems in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s, cassette tape made copying easy, but the tapes' poor quality kept them from posing a serious threat. The real trouble came with digital technology in the 1990s: Downloading made it possible for individuals to copy tunes with almost perfect fidelity, and then make their copies available to millions of other users.
Downloading, therefore, has been nothing less than a revolution in how music is distributed--legally and illegally.
"The Web eliminates two thirds of the cost factors," says Richard Kurin of the Smithsonian Institution. "You don't have to produce a hard product, and you don't have a middleman....The Net has tremendous implications. The big industry question is: How do you handle those implications?"
EARLIER TECHNOLOGIES
Copy and patent rights are covered in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution. (Noah Webster, who created the first American dictionary, lobbied state legislatures and Congress for passage of the first copyright laws during the late 1700s.)
This is not the first time that advances in technology have created problems for copyright holders. For example, after radio stations began broadcasting recorded music instead of live performances in the 1920s, musicians went on strike until they were guaranteed royalties--small payments for each use of their recorded work. And it's likely that ways of dealing with digital music and other digital content will eventually be found, as they were for earlier technologies.
Even now, there are musicians who side with downloaders, and many owners of smaller record labels--who have less money for advertising and promotion than the conglomerates--say that file sharing helps them build word-of-mouth for the lesser-known artists they tend to produce.
But some artists oppose downloading outright, while others are ambivalent, concerned about loss of income, but reluctant to offend their fans.
Record-industry officials say the lawsuits against downloaders are meant to educate the public that downloading is illegal, and are more an effort to contain file swapping than to wipe it out.
"What we're trying to drive for is an environment in which legitimate online music can flourish," says Mitch Bainwol, the chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, which brought the suits. And getting people to pay for online music has gotten a boost recently from services like Apple Computer's iTunes, which sells songs online for 99 cents. Apple says iTunes sold 10 million songs in its first four months.
A CONFUSED OUTLOOK
For now, however, the battle goes on. Downloading from KaZaA, the most popular file-sharing software, dropped 41 percent between June--when the record companies began talking about lawsuits--and September, according to Nielsen/ Net Ratings. But 3.9 million people still used KaZaA during the week of September 15.
The music industry might take heart from a recent New York Times/CBS News poll in which only 14 percent of respondents said downloading was always acceptable, while 44 percent approved of occasional file sharing with friends or acquaintances with music from a TB they had purchased.
But as long as technology makes the illegal behavior so easy--and when for many people, it doesn't "feel" illegal--the record companies will need to do more than sue.
"The record industry needs to win back the hearts and minds of record buyers, because they can't win a technology war," says Eric Garland, the chief executive of Big Champagne, which tracks Internet usage.
Many downloaders would appear to agree and remain unimpressed by record-company pronouncements and threats: "How many people are they suing?" asked Carlo Lutz, 13, a student at Bronx High School of Science in New York, as he listened on the subway to rap music he had uploaded to his MP3 player. "There are millions of us," he added. "It's only a drop in the bucket." "