The Non-Paying Consumer's Perspective
The non-paying consumer probably started out using Napster. By the time Napster was shut down in 2000, the peer to peer filesharing community had grown significantly. In that time it became socially acceptable to download copyrighted music for free, even though it was against the law. Non-paying consumers usually fell into at least one of three following categories:
1. Consciously downloaded mp3s illegally in order to make a statement about the corrupt music industry.
2. Consciously download mp3s because the cost of buying the music legally was too high.
3. Was not technologically or legally knowledgeable enough to realize that downloading mp3s was probably illegal.
College students are among the largest group of non-paying consumers for two main reasons:
1) Not a lot of money
2) Computers with High-Speed internet.
Once Napster was gone, many more programs came to take its place; the main one being KaZaA. In 2003 when the RIAA started suing KaZaA users, some people were scared away from using such programs, and began using pay programs like iTunes. Yet others, who were still willing to risk downloading music for free, found other programs to use.
A few arguments for keeping P2P filesharing free:
- Free Filesharing helps lesser-known artists become better known.
In a survey done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, recording artists were far more likely to say that p2p filesharing has either increased or had no effect on CD sales, Concert sales, and radio play.
- P2P filesharing can be used to preview music to make sure that a purchase is worthwhile.
- The Recording Industry is corrupt, and completely overcharges for CDs.
Artists get only 10 to 14 percent of the price of CDs -- somewhere between $0.86 and $1.20 Go here for more information on CD sales.
