Music Piracy

Virtually everyone dealing with music piracy knows that it is illegal, but why it is illegal is not so well understood. The answer lies primarily in the way that copyright laws apply to music. These rights include the exclusive right to commercially copy the recordings and to distribute/import/export those copies. Depending on the country you live in, these rights may be called copyrights, or ‘related’ or ‘neighbouring’ rights. These are separate to any rights that may subsist in the music or the lyrics that are being recorded.

There are a number of solutions to deal with the piracy issue and also reduce the number of illegal downloading of. music. For starters, the government needs to be more involved in issues like digital rights management and holding the owners of peer-to-peer networks responsible for their users, also we need to teach copyright education at elementary and middle school levels. The Recording Association and record labels should become more involved in subscription-based networks at reasonable prices, so that people are not tempted to go in for free downloads.

The explosion in illegal copying is affecting the entire music community. It has a very real and harmful impact on virtually everyone – from countless musicians, songwriters, performers, producers, recording engineers and others who use music as their platform. We need to act now to maintain the originality of Music.