Is downloading music stealing from the music industry? The music industry has prospered for many years in the past with few copyright problems. However, with the rise of the Internet in the late 1990s, the music industry began to face a new foe like no other. With the combination of software such as Napster and the MP3 technology, users can now download songs with near CD quality at no cost. With all this new computer technology(Internet, MP3, Napster), moral issues have been subject to debate like never before. Is downloading free music stealing from the music industry? From the way I see it, the music industry has brought this upon themselves due to overpriced CD's. A CD costs on average 12 dollars. The CD's usually have one or two good songs that are worth listening to. For over twenty years, the industry has not changed their marketing methods. If a person were given a choice, either to buy a 12-dollar CD for one song or download that same song free of charge, this person would most likely choose the latter. This essay will go into depth on the moral aspect of this issue. For example, whether or not it is right to download music for free while artists lose money. Artists after all, have spent a lot of time and effort into producing a CD Indeed, this technology hurts the artists and those involved in the music industry the most. Lawsuits have recently gone on and off, in my opinion, without purpose. The reason being that there are many ways to download music from the Internet and many file swapping softwares being created at the same time. Determining whether or not file sharing is stealing from the music industry will require moral issues to be discussed in depth.
