Illegal Downloading

Illegal Downloading and the Fall of the Compact Disc

Ever since the dawn of the Internet, people have been able to communicate from across the world in only mere milliseconds. The accessibility of the Internet has been exponentially increasing ever since its creation. The Internet is easily the most important invention of the last 50 years. Because of the Internet's infinite amount of uses, people have found various ways to prosper from it, such as sharing things with other people. From files to folders, people are able to share anything with anyone at anytime. Not only can we share with others, but also we can find websites that allow us to download recipes, movies, and most notably music. But with this freedom comes some pretty important questions. Can we share what's not legally ours? The biggest scandal of sharing comes down to illegally downloading and sharing music. Because of the sheer vastness of the World Wide Web, it's extremely hard to track who is downloading what, and because of the billions of people who use the Internet, it is impossible to prosecute that many people. "Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing." (Kinnally). In the early years of file-sharing, people were scared when they heard about the lawsuits, but today not many people live in fear. The downloading war has become so futile that even my fourth-grade cousin has been able to find music online without paying. It is past the point of no return, and we should just embrace the new generation of free music.

Music sharing began with famous computer programs like Napster and Kazaa, which allowed users to grab files from others; all the while they were able to stream your music too. The famous lawsuit against Napster was spearheaded by Metallica...