Take a long askance gaze toward the individual who just downloaded and burned a CD of a popular recording artist's songs and distributed pirated copies among friends and co-workers. You might ask yourself, "What's it hurting?" Now, multiply that by thousands of individuals throughout the country who engage in this same practice and a broader scope comes into view.

In an industry literally struggling to maintain a solid foothold, one wrong move can produce devastating results as copyright infringement laws are put to the test. While we speak of viruses and worms that threaten to destroy the contents of our own hard drives the record industry as we know it could succumb to a far worst fate.
The digital revolution may pose the most formidable challenge yet in the history of the music industry.

Striking a sleeping lion on the rump with a stick is not a healthy game of sport, yet many web surfing music lovers flirtatiously test the boundaries of copyright infringement laws, soon to learn that the lion is not a heavy sleeper.

With the advent of digital technology, the internet and p2p, (Pier to pier) file sharing networks; such activities as pirating, hacking and relentless hoarding have become a rampant and accepted norm among a generous population of internet surfers. Keeping the music consumer honest has been a thought provoking issue whose answers remain painfully elusive.

As aggressive pursuits of overly rambunctious p2p file sharing networks, e.g. Kazaa, Lime Wire, Win Mx, Bear Share and the like, Apple Computers gets its cue to cap off the digital deluge with its subscriber based music store, iTunes and the I-Pod digital music player.
Apple has compiled an extensive music library available for download for ninety-nine cents per song. Napster, one of the first p2p file sharing networks, attempted to right itself by reemerging as a paid subscriber based platform which proved to be less successful after long and tedious copyright infringement lawsuits poured in.

Unlike the once popular 45 rpm vinyl records many consumers sternly object to buying a full CD just to get one particular song title. For consumers the choices for single song selections have been limited, making downloading and file sharing networks an even more tempting option until the record industry or some genius adolescent in front of a computer discovers a mutually satisfactory solution.

Until next month...


Maurice Johnson

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