Limewire Vs. Itunes Store
Saturday, October 10, 2009 by Kimiko87
When Jay-Z’s new album was leaked two weeks early for the whole world to download on file- sharing websites, the famous rapper quoted ‘we can’t stop people from downloading illegally. This is now the culture. I see it as a preview, and I’m excited for people to hear the album. Because, if they buy the album or not, they will still pay to go to the concert. I’m very proud of the work I’ve done, so enjoy it’.
The recent lecture on piracy raised some controversial issue. It’s a topic that everybody has strong opinions on. In a technological advanced society, we all have graduated from the portable CD players, and now have Ipods and Mp3 players. Just on the bus the other day, I noticed approximately 90% of people had headphones in their ears, connected to an Mp3 player of some kind. So the question that is raised: How and where do we get the music onto our Mp3 players?
Academics and public figures all have different approaches to this new cultural phenomenon. As new laws of piracy have been places in many countries, this has not stopped people from clicking that ‘download’ button. Many record companies and artists are familiar with illegal download, and instead of fighting it, they have decided to change their marketing strategies (concert ticket prices, merchandise etc).
The CNN clip that was showed in the lecture with the student being fined for illegally downloading thirty songs, I think people watching would have just saw him as being highly unlucky that he got caught. This would not detach people from continuous file-sharing or downloading activity. The argument made by the student is that ‘our generation are suffering as seen normal in our society’. The reporter presented a firm argument that piracy is a ‘crime’, but clearly it was a case of ‘agree to disagree’ with the obvious ‘generation gap’. In Yar’s article, it claimed that ‘only 26 percent opposed software piracy; in principal’ (609).
Looking at my Itunes music library and knowing one song costs $1, I would have paid $7200 for every song that I have. Like many people, music is often my escape, and I simply could not live without it.