Help! My stepson has this whole senior project due immediately! I sort of know what I'm doing but I tend to spend way too much time on things and he needs help like yesterday! We are both very ADD! The paper he is written is below. I know we can use it to fill in the outline but right now I am stuck on the Thesis Statement.
This is where we need help:
1. The Outline
Should Music Piracy Remain Illegal?
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Outline
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Conclusion
Music piracy is one of the most frequently committed crimes in the world and happens everyday. However, when one looks from a different perspective, it may not look like such a crime. Most successful artists make in the tens of millions every year according to eHow.com. If that's the case, how much is piracy really hurting these people? If music piracy is hurting the artist so much then why are some of them living in bigger houses then the president of the United States? If it hurt them so badly it would show and it hasn't. Music piracy benefits artists more than it hurts.
In the case of music piracy most offenders are everyday people who work 9 to 5 jobs and have families, but big record companies sue them over downloading music for free. It seems a little greedy when you look at the difference in pay between the artist and the people who download the songs. Stats say that the people who pirate the music are more likely to go to the show and buy the albums after downloading tracks than the average person (Ernesto). Also, people who pirate music are more likely to develop an interest in the groups or artists and that will lead to them attending the shows, buying albums and attire, etc. When put in perspective, record companies are just out for money and don't care how they get it.
Record companies start suing for ridiculous amounts of money in an attempt to intimidate the pirates out of downloading music and the main groups affected are college kids that don't have the money. Sarah Barg, a sophomore at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, received an email stating that she owed $3,000 to the Recording Industry Association of America (Bratton). For that amount of money, she would be paying $7.87 per song (itunes charges .99 cents a song). Most of the songs she downloaded as a joke and were from the eighties and weren't even relevant anymore yet she was still going to court over them. The company sent out sixty other letters with similar claims to students at UNL as well as hundreds sent out to over sixty other universities across the country. Not knowing how else to handle the situation, Barg contacted her parents and they paid the $3,000 settlement. "I don't know what I would have done. I'm only 20 years old," says Barg. Over five hundred college students nationwide have paid settlements to avoid being sued. "I see it as bullying," UNL freshman Andrew Johnson says, "Legally, it makes sense, because we don't have the money to fight back." Johnson illegally downloaded one song and settled $3,000 to avoid being sued for one song. The money used came from the 18 year old's college fund and he now has to work three jobs to compensate for his losses. The companies seem to target those can't fight back.
In 2007, major record companies such as Warner music groups, Warner Bros Records, Inc., and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, tried to sue a young Texan woman named, Whitney Harper, for illegally downloading music from file sharing networks on the internet(Malisow). Whitney was 16 years old and was being sued for a minimum of $750 per song and she downloaded thirty-seven songs. That is over $20,000 and she is only sixteen years old. Harper tried to use the Innocent Infringer Act that would reduce fees to $200 per song. In order to do that, she had to prove she was unaware of the copyright laws. she claimed that the copyright notice placed on cds were not on the file sharing networks on the Internet therefore she was unaware. The companies referred to the sixteen-year-old as a "long term massive infringer" of copyright laws. Harper warned that if the companies won the case that downloading music off the Internet could never be innocent infringement. The Harper case is one the few still going through federal courts. The companies had stated they were going to begin transitioning away from suing individuals and find better means of fixing the issue.
After years of record companies using an intimidation method to fix the pirating "problem" it potentially got them nowhere because the amount of pirates only went up, and the efforts by the companies were in most cases useless. According to the Wall Street Journal, they attempted suing many single mothers, a thirteen-year-old girl, and a dead person. The new approach is for the companies are to work with Internet service providers and when music is being pirated the user receives a warning that they will lose Internet service if they continue(WSJ.com). The companies still reserve the right to sue if someone is a heavy violator or has ignored several warnings, but even with the new system, it still looks like the companies are only out for money, but in an attempt to escape negative attention from the media, they change their approach.
According to The Independent, people who illegally download music also spend more money on music than anyone else. The Secretary of State for Business, Peter Mandelson, stated that the record companies new approach to crack down on illegal down loaders by cutting off internet service could potentially harm the music industry more than help it. "The people who file share are the ones who are interested in music. They use file sharing as a discovery mechanism." The artists also have mixed opinions over file sharing, some such as James Blunt and Lily Allen are anti-piracy and Shakira is pro-piracy(Shields). Sites have come out with monthly bills for unlimited music plans that seem fairer.
Some artists don't feel affected by file sharing and support the fact that piracy creates a bigger fan base for them. Bands like Angels and Airwaves have produced free records so copyright wasn't an issue. They figure that the fans will still come see them play and record sales aren't the only thing to being in a successful band. Some artists don't seem to realize that. Most artists make plenty off of record sales even with a piracy "problem", so court cases and law suits on everyday people by record companies seems a bit greedy and selfish. Even with the new laws, they are still pushing to hard to stop an unstoppable problem.
Today music piracy is known as a dead issue. Most cases that are still pending are being dropped. This year a $54,000 fine on a single mother of four was dropped by the U.S. District Court Judge, Micheal Davis, who stated piracy is "no longer monstrous and shocking. The need for deterrence cannot justify a two million verdict for stealing and distributing twenty-four songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music"(physorg.com). Thomas Rasset was convicted in 2007 and was ordered to pay $220,000, but the judge who presided over the trial called off the verdict, saying it was "wholly disproportionate and oppressive." Her case was one of the thousands that had actually made it to court.
In 2011, with new laws, these cases should not be forgotten about. The people who lost cases should be compensated and apologized to because they did nothing other than have an interest in the artist.
