Internet piracy hurts many and helps none
By Marcos Moreno
University President Paul Locatelli, S.J., recently issued an e-mail regarding the illegal downloading of media at Santa Clara. In it, he urges students not to commit what he calls a "violation of intellectual property rights."
In other words: Quit stealing music, you pirates! Heck, no one ever got arrested for buying a CD. If you ask me, buying is simply better -- for a number of reasons.
First off, you get what you pay for. Acquiring a CD legitimately is the simplest way to ensure that if anything goes wrong, a refund or exchange can be made. You don't have that guarantee with Internet downloads. The only certainty there is that if you're found out, you're facing a lawsuit.
Oftentimes the audio quality of an MP3 is garbled and fuzzy. Others the song isn't even complete. No record company would ever be careless enough to forget to include a song in its entirety on an album.
Some CDs even come with cool extras, like a poster or stickers. Not to mention the fact that you get the entire album instead of one song.
Downloading can be an arduous tasks well, depending on file size and the number of songs you've decided to illegally pirate at a given moment. Why wait for a download to finish when instant gratification is as close as the local record store? In the end, we're just victimizing ourselves, whether we know it or not.
You see, it's the local merchants who get the shaft from music pirates who use services like KaZaa. Retailers are forced to raise prices in order to compete.
This isn't fair to the consumers, who already pay high prices for music. Not to mention the death sentence issued to the retailers that have to try and sell something that many people are getting for free.
Small chain record store businesses are being shut down because of the all too common practice of file sharing.
Another victim of copyright infringement is the Recording Industry Association of America, who loses $4.2 billion per year due to rampant worldwide piracy.
No one ever goes to their favorite restaurant, orders $4.2 billion worth of food and then skips out on the bill. It's pure lunacy.
Sure, I know music is expensive, but that is only because music pirates are stealing the record companies' potential income.
The RIAA is coming down hard on anyone caught committing this sort of crime. It's no surprise that their number one offender is college students. They're easy targets, since this sort of thing is so frequent on campuses across the nation and have virtually nonexistent legal status.
A first time offense can get you up to three years in prison and $250,000 in fines, and repeat offenders can expect a maximum of six years not downloading music in an uncomfortable, rectangular cell.
Eighteen dollars may seem like a lot to cough up for a brand new CD, but I do believe it's a lot cheaper than the alternative. With a fine that size, you could buy 12,500 CDs or pay for Santa Clara tuition and still have a nice chunk of change left over.
I guess it all boils down to stealing -- stealing from the person who created the work in the first place. It's as if you write a great essay and someone copies it word for word. That is what's happening here.
And yes, the record companies may own the recordings themselves, but the artists have the rights to the songs. How are they supposed to live if people steal their work?
Ninety-five percent of all recording artists use royalties and fees to make a living. This means that any time somebody buys an album, the artist makes a profit. It's the same as you or I getting a paycheck for the hours we've worked. The artists don't get royalties from file sharing.
Most of the profit goes to studio fees. Eighty-five percent of recorded albums don't generate enough revenue to pay what it costs to produce it. This includes mixes, edits, artwork and even studio time.
So what does this mean to Santa Clara students? If we want our favorite artists to stick around for a while, we need to endorse their work. Making it in the music industry is tough, but staying afloat in these times of rampant file sharing use might just take divine intervention.
*Ã Ã Marocs Moreno is a sophomore.