Intellectual Property

The debate over intellectual property is an interesting one.  The internet has allowed for so much more debate over ownership – what rights are afforded to the person repsonsible for creating a product.  This is most interesting in terms of music for me.  In recent years, there has been a big push by the FCC and individual record companies to punish people who are illegally downloading music.  While on the one hand, downloading music without paying is technically breaking the law, there are some considerations that need to be made.  I agree that the internet has allowed for the expansion of the music domain so that music is easily accessible for free, which may hurt the record companies some.  However, these costs cannot be that great – the majority of people downloading illegal music are teenagers downloading an individual song for a certain purpose.  They are not the people who download every album as it comes out to turn around and sell it to someone else.  I think record companies need to calm down and realize that yes, this is a problem, but it is probably not as big a problem as they are making it out to be.  I think instead of contracting the FBI to crack down on illegal downloading, the labels themselves should take the time to protect their songs against illegal downloading, like Apple has done with it’s products.  I also think they need to realize that their music was already accessible for free – anyone whose friend had a CD they wanted could easily copy it and then have it themselves, and this was never viewed as an illegal act.  Just because the Internet has made this sharing occur between strangers instead of friends are record labels freaking out about their “lost profits.”  They need to decide – either they protect their music so that no one can obtain a copy in any form other than direct purchase, or they should realize that they are setting up double-standards and adjust their models to fit the times.  Apple allows songs to be shared between a certain number of computers, to allow for the switching of machines, and after that they can no longer be played.  The technology is there to protect music, companies just need to decide if it is worth it for them to utilize them; if it’s not, they also need to back off the illegal downloading push.

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