Like the eternal chase of the mouse and the cat, from the invention of recordable media there has been an infinite fight between musicians and/or producers with “pirates”. Everyday new developments in information technologies allows us to keep more and more information and even smaller and cheaper media. This advances plus other aspects makes it easier to get our hands into illegally obtained music.
The internet has become the villain and the hero in different cases. Justin Bieber and the new Golden Voice man have taken the opportunities, even if they didn’t directly look for them, of low cost high reach internet media. In matter of days, their videos became viral and consequently they became famous.
Unfortunately for the more traditional music companies, this freedom of communications limits their most valuable asset: Control. Not only controlling the artists but also their creation impulses, and even the music we hear in our favorite radios stations. Believe me, I’ve hated a song, and after hearing it about 100 times I begin to sing it! That type control is traduced in $$$ millions!!! Even though music industry is a huge business last periods have been of constant decline.
Let’s be honest about it, most of us have at LEAST hear some music from unknown sources, but at it is core it just stealing, so if we hope to live in a civilized society, we should encourage laws and regulations preventing this kind of behavior. The music industry has given lots of people a way of life and has a positive impact on economies around the world. So in short we should protect it.
As always I am not in favor of newer regulations by bigger governments, but in this case we are dealing with a special market. It is not rational to conclude that music piracy would be completely eliminated in the future, due to the nature of electronic media people CONSTANTLY will continue to beat the “system”. One example of newer mechanisms to try to prevent piracy is the development of sites in the internet that allows the consumer just to pay for a particular song, instead of buying an album which you would finally appreciate two or three songs. Eventually we can conclude that this is just an eternal chase, between the listener and producers, labels and artists; and this chase would continue to develop newer and best music media and ways to try to stop electronic piracy.
