Music Piracy

Rhetoric writing is defining who you are writing for, and why you are writing. “It is also implicitly asking questions about delivery, economics, copyright, and credit. What motivates someone to produce and distribute a piece of writing? What motivates someone else to access it, read it, interact with it? These are basic questions of rhetoric, which are also basic questions of delivery, economics, and copyright.” (DeVoss 2006)

The development of Napster is just not about download music illegally. It created something that also changed writing in the digital form as well. People were sharing not only music but students were sharing papers, software was being put on websites and being downloaded illegally.

 

Once someone creates something, another person cannot claim that as their own. One of the main fights is the fight over ownership. Some will say that if I bought let’s say a Metallica CD, it is mine do with it as I see fit. Where some of this is true, you bought it so you can set it on fire, throw it from a moving train or use it as a coaster to protect your coffee table. There is one thing you cannot do with it, you cannot take the songs from the CD and turn them into MP3 files and share with your friends.

 

Metallica was one a band that was dead set against Napster, and in 2000 the band took their dispute to the courtroom. Lars Ulrich said, “This is not about Metallica versus the Internet. We know that the Internet is the future in terms of spreading your music to your fans, and we're excited about that. But we want to control how that's done, just like we've always controlled what we make. We object to companies that take the liberty of providing that (downloadable master recordings) access without asking us, and Napster never came and asked us about this first.”

 

Recording and releasing music can be very expensive and time consuming. Many bands and record labels that are getting ready to release  a new album can choose a website like a music publication or use the free music streaming service BandCamp to give fans a preview of what the album will sound like. The drawback to using streaming sties like this is, there are some people that could get the encryption of the song and then put it on illegal sites like www.itleaked.com were people could download the song. I feel that this is no different from walking into a record store, taking the CD from the shelf putting in your pocket and walking out without paying for it.