Everyone has done it before at some point in time. Downloading a file (most likely music), the thing is I know a lot of people who don’t know how torrents work and usually one or two people download songs off networks such as eDonkey or Limewire and send them over to friends using Windows Live messenger.
Know what’s funny? These people don’t stop to think, is what I’m doing illegal? Shouldn’t I take precautionary measures so I can’t get caught? So they just live their live happily until they do get caught (doesn’t happen a lot but it DOES happen!) and when they’re caught, they get fined an absolutely stupid amount of money. The funny thing is for downloading an album your fine will be 800 times higher than going to a store and stealing the physical disc.
I don’t get how organizations like the RIAA keep going strong in this digital age. The only reason I can think of is that the label firms give good money for lawyers and other stuff to get the most money out of people downloading music.
See, that’s what’s wrong! Labels spend money trying to deal with downloaders, instead, they should give the money to the artists! Artists only get a tiny fraction of the money when you buy a song or a cd anyways, so the labels aren’t protecting the artists’ creativity, they try to protect THEIR OWN pockets.
Instead of sueing people and spending much money in doing so, labels should use the money to develop online platforms such as the iTunes store and reduce prices for CDs (they could, because they’d spend less money on lawyers). Then everyone is happy, labels are happy because people will buy more songs again, artists are happy because people buy their music and people are happy because the prices are so low for songs that they’re willing to pay for the songs now.
Of course, there will always be illegal downloads, pickpocketing and stealing stuff from your average store hasn’t ceased to exist either. It’s fair that, when caught, you have to pay a fine but why do you have to pay almost a thousandfold more when downloading the same thing you wanted to steal? That’s just outrageous!
To end this post, here’s a list of (severe) crimes that won’t have a fine as high as downloading a song.
1. Child abduction: the fine is only like $25000.
2. Stealing the actual CD: the fine is $2,500
3. Rob your neighbor: the fine is $375,000
4. Burn a house down: The fine is just over $375,000
5. Stalk someone: The fine is $175,000
6. Start a dogfighting ring: the fine is $50,000
7. Murder someone: The maximum penalty is only $25,000 and 15 years in jail, and depending on your yearly salary, would probably be far slighter a penalty that $2 million.