A ‘hard habit to break’
DOWNLOADING ‘ I know it’s stealing’ downloader admits Flouting law hurts emerging artists
Neil is a thief. He’s not proud of it, but he doesn’t deny it either. He has, by his own admission, about 3,400 songs on his computer and he hasn’t paid for one of them.
“ I know it’s stealing and I guess I kind of feel bad, but it’s out there, it’s simple and it’s a hard habit to break,” he says. “ At least I admit it.” Not all of his friends do. As most 22- year- olds in suburban Toronto do, almost all the guys in Neil’s circle download music and other media without paying, and many have excuses.
“ Some say that musicians make too much money and others say that the recording industry is full of executives who steal from artists, so it’s okay to steal from them,” he says.
“ I even know one guy who says that the concept of copyright violates free speech — that nobody can own a song.”
Neil knows his friends are just kidding themselves. He knows that songs and other intellectual property can be owned and he knows that by acquiring it without paying, he’s stealing.
Ever since an 18- year- old college dropout named Shawn Fanning started Napster in 1999, people have been using peer- topeer ( P2P) software to share music, software and even movies on their home computers. P2P works as follows: by opening part of your computer for other users to access, you may then access theirs.
Another user — a peer — can choose to download any files made available on your computer and you can download what’s on theirs. Of course, what the overwhelming majority of Napster users were trading were MP3 music files, virtually all of which were in violation of copyright laws.
Napster was sued by organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America and individual artists and bands such as Metallica and lost. But other P2P applications — such as KaZaa, Limewire and eDonkey — have emerged and the filesharing controversy continues on a huge scale.
“ We have up to 20 million users
on a single day,” says Phil
Armstrong, spokesman
for KaZaa. “ Allegedly
some of them trade data
with copyright, but we
put warnings on our site
and on our software.
“ The legality of downloading is still a grey area
for most people; the government charges a 25- cent tariff on the sale of every blank CD to pay artists for copies.”
“ Many people interpret that as meaning that all downloads are legal,” says Jeff Leiper, an analyst with the Yankee Group.
“ But that law was enacted in 1997, before file- sharing, and it
was only intended to compensate artists for personal copies, not for sharing.” The recording industry isn’t vague about what side it’s on.
“ According to a poll we did, 38 per cent of Canadians think downloading copyrighted material is illegal and 26 per cent think it’s legal,” says Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association ( CRIA).
“ But even if it was legal, would that make it right?” One of Neil’s peers admits she’ll download music by artists such as Black Eyed Peas “ because they’re rich,” but would go out and buy an album from a struggling artist.
“There’s a big stick-it-to-the-man contingent among downloaders and it’s made worse when they see an artist with 30 cars on MTV Cribs,” says Henderson.
“ But it’s really hurting emerging artists, lots of Canadian acts — like Feist and Arcade Fire — would have platinum records and international tours if it wasn’t for downloaders keeping their record sales down.”
Jully Black is an internationally acclaimed singer from Toronto who has worked with Destiny’s Child and Nas, but she’s having trouble selling records.
“ She’s a household name who can’t afford a house,” says Henderson. “ She sold 15,000 records last year, but there were 2.8 million requests for her work on P2P.” When an artist can’t show big numbers of record sales, recording companies and tour organizers are reluctant to invest in them. According to the CRIA, the combined profits of all independent record producers in Canada fell from $ 15 million in 2002 to $ 1 million in 2003.
“ It’s ironic, the people who are downloading say they prefer newer, edgier artists,” says Henderson.
“ But by downloading their favourite artists, they are ensuring that people invest in the better- known acts and their favourite bands don’t get recording deals and can’t afford to tour.” Although authorized downloading sources such as Apple’s iTunes or the new Napster have made a dent in illegal downloading, unauthorized downloads outnumber them 14 to 1, Henderson estimates, and he says that the proportion is higher in Canada than in countries which have “ stricter copyright enforcement.” “When Gwen Stefani’s ‘Hollaback Girl’ broke 1 million authorized downloads in the U. S., we expected about 120,000 in Canada,” he says. “ There were 21,000.”