What is copyright and how does in pertain to music industry?



What is copyright and how does in pertain to music industry?

Introduction

Historically, copyright comes from English common law. England enacted the first copyright law in 1710, titled the Statute of Anne. This gave the author the sole right of printing and copying of their work. The United States based their copyright law on the English version. George Washington signed the law in 1789 and the government revised it several times over the years. The United States follows the major revision in 1976 with minor modifications today (Bhattacharjee 2007). The intent of the law is not to restrict use of creative works or even to protect the authors and the artists.

Discussion

The music industry has constantly shown its concerns over negative and destructive impacts of online music sharing. Music industry, no doubt, is facing a never ending challenge of online music piracy and coping with the problem of illegal sharing of music files.

“More than 200 million songs were downloaded illegally over the Internet in the country in 2007, the equivalent of 20 million CDs” (Bhattacharjee 2006).

Since its beginning, online music piracy has adversely affected music companies in terms of sales. Music companies and organizations attempted to control online music piracy by taking legal actions and adopting different business strategies, but did not achieve success. Advocates for strong copyright face considerable challenges in the modern digital age as advances in computing and telecommunications facilitate copying large amounts of data across any distance (Bhattacharjee 2006). “Around the world, millions of consumers engage in illegal downloading of music, in violation of copyright rights of musicians and a fair return on investment from all other links in the chain, including producers and distributors, 1.2% of Americans are use sharing software, other countries are 0.4% ...