Music Piracy at Glenbrook North High School

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Behind Music Piracy

There are over seven billion people on our planet. Realistically, every human on Earth is different than the person sitting next to them and because of this we share few things in common. One of those similiarites is music, the "art of arranging sounds". For thousands of years music has produced marvelous effects on people. These sounds can make a person happy and excited, or make a person sad and depressed. Every individual has his or her own favorite type of music. If we look back into the 20th century, if a person wanted to own music, he or she would have to stroll over to a record shop and buy the newest Beatles or Queen album. Only more recently, with the progession of technology, music moved to more compact forms. The emergence of the iPod has eliminated the need for anyother physical form of music such as the CD. As this is very convenient and efficient for the past-faced world we live in today, it also has created a huge problem striking the music industry. As easily as people can purchase music with the click of a button, they can steal it without paying just the same way. Sites like LimeWire and uTorrent have ravished the music industry in the past decade. Altough, these sites and programs are just catalysts for people to commit music piracy. Music piracy is a large-scale problem affecting the whole world. But, in order to try to educate the world of this detriment, we need to start small and build at the base, at Glenbrook North High School.

What is music piracy and what makes it illegal?

LimeWire Logo (Courtesy of Flickr)

Music piracy is the act of copying or distributing music that a person does not own. Music is protected under U.S. copyright law. It is just like the warning see you at the beginning of a movie. It tells you that the movie cannot be copied or sold and the punishments that follow. Just because on a CD or at the beginning of a song there is no warning, music is still protected from the same actions. The most palpable way to understand music piracy is to look at examples that quite possibly you have been involved in. The rule of thumb is if you did not pay for it , then it is illegal. The only exception is if the artist gave you consent or authorized you to have it for free. To start off, if a person downloads music off of a CD, then puts it on the internet or gives it to anyone else who did not pay for it, it is illegal. If you download music off of file-sharing sites, like LimeWire for free, then it is illegal. Anything along these lines where a person acquires music for free, equals an unlawful action. 

Why is music piracy bad?

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Any person may think that if he or she downloads one song off the internet for free, that it's not a big deal. The band or artist has billions of dollars and won't care about losing a little money. This may be true, but it's not only that one person downloading one song for free. It's millions of people downloading millions of songs for free, which hurts the music industry and economy. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, the U.S. economy took a $12.5 million hit, including 70,000 jobs and $2 billion loss  in wages overall to employees of the music industry. This includes artists, songwriters, singers, bands, audio engineers, producers, publishers and more. Music piracy is a form of stealing as if a person stole a candy bar. That is why we chose to educate and create awareness at Glenbrook North High School (GBN).

Music Piracy at GBN

To begin, our goal for this project was to see how students at GBN were involved with music piracy, so that we could create awareness about it. In order to complete this goal we created a survey. This survey gave us conclusive evidence that at GBN, music piracy is indeed a problem. Here are just some of the many interesting questions we asked:

The first question we asked in our survey was, where do you download the majority of your music? 

About 36% of the respondents said that they got their music off of file-sharing websites. About 26% of the respondents ripped their music of of YouTube (taking the audio out of the video on YouTube). The  only option that wasn't illegal was getting music off of iTunes, by paying for it. 26% of the respondents answered this which is still much lower than all of the illegal responses. 

We asked, do you think file-sharing (LimeWire) is illegal?

64% of the people answered that file-sharing is illegal. This is true, and recently sites like LimeWire have been shut down for copyright violations. Still a large percentage of people answered that they believed it was legal. This is surprising because just recently a lot of these sites have been in the news for being in trouble with the law. 

We asked, on a scale of 1-5 how frequently do you illegally download music or songs off of the internet (5 being always, 1 being never)?

This was one of the most startling questions in this survey because as much as 38% of people always download music illegally. It then dropped off as it got closer to the never option. 20% of people say they never download music illegally off of the internet.

We asked, on a scale of 1-5 how guilty would/do you feel if you downloaded music illegally off of the internet (1 being not guilty, 5 being very guilty)?

58% of the respondents answered that they feel no guilt when or if they download music illegally. This just says how people are oblivious or uneducated about the consequences of pirating music. It also says how important it is to create awareness within GBN about music piracy, because statistically people don't really care. 

We asked, which of the following websites have you ever used?

From these responses, it is easy to conclude that modern technology and the advancement of the internet has been exploited by the students at GBN. Very few students said that they had never used any of these websites.

For our last question we asked, how much do you think the fine is for downloading one song illegally?

The real answer is there is a fine of $750 for illegally downloading one song. There are many other penalties, including jail time, that could follow. A good amount of people got this answer correct. But, 36% or the largest amount of people answered $200 for one song. A positive from this question is that people do recognize that there is a monetary consequence connected to illegally downloading music. 

How can we improve the awareness of music piracy?

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From our surveys, we saw that a large majority of students at GBN pirate music. As stated above it is a problem in the world, and now we can see that it is also a problem locally. We did this survey to not only find data about GBN, but also to create awareness. People now may start thinking about what they are doing when they illegally download music, and can change their ways. By answering these suggestive questions, all students thought about their actions actively. Music piracy not only affects its own industry, but everyone. These artists create valuable work, and need to be compensated. Change can start at Glenbrook North High School. Lastly, with the willingness of its own students, GBN can end music piracy and educate citizens about the wrongfulness of music piracy within its own community.