Music downloading, illegal or not ?

Downloading music has become a part of everyday life of all most young people in modern world today. With the development of computer, downloading music and file-sharing are also developed. Although in someone’s opinion, that is a kind of piracy, I support music-downloading and file-sharing, as a teenager.

First of all, we should ask why people like downloading music and sharing file which they are supposed to buy in the store. The main reasons are: users do not want to spend $18 to $20 bucks for a CD that has only one song they like and price of CDs increases within a few months. Someone may hear a good song and in an album, then go buy the CD and not like the other songs on it. Nobody wants to pay outrageous amount just for a good song on a bad CD. Some feel that buying the whole album is not worth the money as the prices have recently increased within the past few months. Furthermore, not many teenagers have a monthly income to buy all albums they want. So increasing album price only encourages file-sharers share more music often than before.

According to the last year report of Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 83% of teenagers download music regularly. It is not weird if we know that, people who never download file make up only 39% of music sales. That is true. If we just go to the stores in our locations, we just know what kind of music those stores have only. But if we use file-sharing programs, we will know more singers and music bands. How do people in other countries know Linkin Park or Eminem if their stores do not sale album of those singers or bands? Thanks to Kazaa and Napster.

Downloading music and sharing file are not the thieves. I have my own music, my own files and I have right to share it to my friend. “You listen to music which you downloaded from Internet or shared file is illegal”, said RIAA. So, what is the difference between listening to music downloaded on the Internet and on the radio on the car? We do not pay for that music either. On the other hand, I accept that downloading the whole music album is illegal. “If you like one or two songs by the band, then by all means go ahead and download them off from the Internet” (Reddick, the leader of Bowling For Soup). However, if I like five or more than songs, users should pay for that.

Downloading music does not make the Producers lose their money although some people think that it will. On the contrary, it helps increase their sales. A downloader has to buy a blank CD to burn his music if he does not want to store in his computer. It means this lose money is the rise “1.7 billion blank CDs in 2003” (Washington Post newspaper). Users who want to have faster speed on downloading need to install new hard wares like DSL modem. Billions of people download regularly, so at least ten percents of them do this and hard ware producers’ sales could be increased. It is providing many news jobs to people who may not have one otherwise.

If stealing just a few songs from a person, but creating and helping someone else with it, then why not break the law. Others people may argue that stealing is completely stealing and that is wrong no matter what how many songs we download. But there are still many ways to get music free. The more the law restricts or the more RIAA sues, the more other ways teenagers try to find to reach their target. We easily understand why there too much users are now using Kazaa because they could not use Napster (on the last few years).