Persoasive essay

         

                           The “Legal” Song Downloads Should Be A Crime

There is an advertorial that can be seen in most of DVDs it is just like this; “You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a purse, why would you steal music?” It is obvious that this phrase actually is the summary of all theses is that downloading unlicensed music should be a serious crime however some people are answering this phrase with such a rational phrase; “You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a purse, why would you steal my money?” I have to admit that this is a congruous phrase since sky high prices of “legal” music download are the thieves in the equation... So who is the real victim in this equation?

         Millions of downloads occur every single day, companies continuing claiming that the damage given by a single “illegal” download is severe to companies. Yet the pieces don’t fit; how can music companies survive if their music is being downloaded illegally? Since it is so easily to download illegal music – which is unethical – from web pages, and if we scrutinize number of people downloaded from that site we would see a number over 1,000,000 in popular sites. The answer is simple the “victim” music companies balance their budgets by charging their customers even more. Is it legal? Should people pay for other’s fault? Of course not! Honest people are being chastised for being honest; how fair is that? The standard price for a song is $0.99 in iTunes (a popular music download store hosted by Apple) and the price of the albums are variable. Isn’t it too high? It is nearly as same as the CD’s which can be bought from stores, but there is a difference; the normal CD’s requires more money for transportation and manufacturing and these steps are included to expenses thus a lot less expense is made to establish one music file that thousands of CDs but the price is the same. The price is the same because the music companies are including the economical damage done to them done by illegal music downloads. They’d answer my statements above with claiming that if people wouldn’t download then we wouldn’t add the cost to the prices. This is a reasonable thought that I also have thought before writing this article however a fact is forgotten. Every single person who has been on internet know that downloading music is illegal even the free music pages are “warning” their visitors with disclaimers. There are severe laws against this type of crime. However, who is minding all these? Are they benighted? Of course not since most of the internet users are highly educated. The single thing that could be said for this situation is that they just don’t want to pay. Hence there is no possible way to prevent illegal downloads thus the prices will be the same – or even higher – and honest people will still be overcharged. 

“Parking fee; $5, the kit of your favorite team; $32 tickets; $167 downloading the teams official music; No, you can’t buy this since your are not on the nations list” should have been the correct sentence. There are approximately 200 official nations on the world however the iTunes is accepting credit cards only from 22 of them and the other178 nations are just forgotten. Do they have right to deprive 178 from music? Since downloading unlicensed music is still illegal in those countries. Or should they download songs illegally? The fact that it is not possible to buy music coerces people to download music illegally. A number of people state that they have tries to create an account on iTunes to be able to download music legally since they did not want to download music illegally however the iTunes did not accept their credit cards since the iTunes was not providing service especially for that country. What would these victims do? Buy CDs I don’t think so since the CDs have copyright protection that even may not let the people copy songs on their CD’s to their computers. Therefore they will be compelled to download music illegally but in a desperate way.

         Who can trust without thinking the consequences? They legal music buyers do since they are not aware of the potential risk. There are thousands of fake web pages who just imitate download stores, in those sites you normally write your credit card number and submit it, likewise the legal sites the music file – which is illegal - is downloaded to your computer however the credit card number does directly in to the fake web page’s server. Could we trust such pages? No but they are so undistinguishable that the customers think that they are in the real web page. Where does the money go? To a budget for bigger. Then how would a person try to buy “legal” music with a conscience could download “legal” music while knowing that the web page may be fake and the money that he paid – and a lot more which will be withdrew from that person’s account- may be used in more sever crimes? Because it is not possible to tell the difference and you just cannot put holograms or any other special markings on a web page.

         “My neighbors are downloading, my friends are downloading, why I am the only one who pays for this music?” this is the start of illegal music downloading for that person and most of other people. The honest customers are also paying for his friends and neighbors who have downloaded free music. As the time passes while the amount of money that honest customers pay gradually increase, the level of exasperation starts to increase and after a point that hones customers joins the illegal downloaders.

         The companies have millions of irrational arguments that they recite everyday. On of the most conspicuous is that the songs are results of incredible efforts and it would be unfair to artists. It may be half true; yet what about customer’s rights, is it fair to charge them the money which is unpaid? In fact these customers work harder than artists even though the customers earn less. Why pay more than normal?  Another idea of company’s claim that the number of illegal downloads will decrease if the web pages providing access to free music are blocked. There are two reasons that make this idea useless. First of all this will violate communication rights which is included to human rights hence it basically is against human rights and the second reason of mine for this is that a lot of users download free music content from p2p (a program that publishes all of your documents automatically and provides them if they are wanted by a user; of course this is mostly used for transferring illegal music files) and it simply is unblock able. There are also some people who say; “the music companies will bankrupt and thousants of people will be unemployed”. They just won’t, how? They are charging the costs of illegal music downloads.  I

         The unlicernced downloading is a crime and it will be a crime. Yet I do not support this idea under current circumstances. The whole market is based on injustice; the companies are unfair to customers and customers are unfair to companies but still customers are effected more. If there wouldn’t be the reasons that I have listed above, I would definitely support downloading illegally should be banned but now I can’t. I would be a crime to download legally while companies are unfair to their customers as they make them pay their own loss by their own lack of capacity to prevent illegal downloads. How? Easy by not letting any p2p server to survive in first place however it is too late everybody are expert about downloading music illegally. Hence Downloading free music is not even a crime for every ingle people who can also listen the voice of the ones who are shown to us as thieves.