Pirates+and+Piracy

 =Introduction=

toc Even before the coming of the Internet, pirates and piracy were an issue. After the Internet, however, the act of piracy has been simplified (both in terms of copying creative material, and in terms of getting away with it). Some try to justify online piracy in terms of the copyrighted material's intangibility (honors.montana.edu). For instance, taking a physical product from a store would be seen as a larger crime than downloading a song from a peer to peer network since if you are physically removing a product from a store, that means store owners have one less of that product to sell. On the other hand, a free music download is seen as removing nothing tangible from potential sale.

=Piracy=


 * Piracy** may be defined as the unauthorized use or copying of creative material that is protected under copyright law (honors.montana.edu). The law is changing, and this changes the way our culture is made (honors.montana.edu). For instance, Creative Commons is used today for copyright protection, and has a great impact on what creativity is produced for these type of patent laws.

=Pirates=

A **pirate** is the name for a person commiting piracy.

=Music Piracy=

The technology of compressing audio files to be downloaded easily has created much concern in the music industry. The concern here is that with the free downloading artists and record companies will lose profit and record sales would decrease greatly. There are four distinct areas of music piracy, which includes:

1) pirate recordings that are unauthorized duplications of sound only. 2) counterfeit recordings are unauthorized recordings and the actual duplication of original artwork, label, and packaging. 3) Bootleg recordings, which are unauthorized recordings of live performances. 4) Online piracy which is unauthorized uploading of a copyrighted sound.

Interesting facts about music pirating:

- the music industry loses about $ 4.2 billion to music piracy worldwide each year - 85% of recordings released do not generate enough revenue to cover their costs. Record companies rely on the 15% to help the less profitable types of music - 36% of downloaders buy less music - total amount of lawsuits launched internationally have been 11,552 - since legal action there has been a drop a 45% drop in users of the peer-to-peer service Kazaa

=Links of Interest=

Copyright Infringement Canadian Copyright Act Copyrighting Online Work Creative Commons

=Works Cited=

__Montana State University__. Aug 2005. Montana State University. 23 Feb 2006. <[|http://www.honors.montana.edu/%7Ejjc/freeculture.html]>. n. pag.

__RIAA__. 2003. Ant-Piracy. online at http://www.riaa.com/issues/piracy/default.asp accessed on February 27th, 2006.

__IFPI.__ Music Piracy Report. online at http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/about/services.html accessed on February 27th, 2006.

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