Monday, June 2, 2003
Right or wrong, lots of teens download music for free
By SELENA RICKS, Portland Press Herald Writer
© 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
Music fans like Ryan Brown make the recording industry shudder [erschauern]. Brown, 18, of Portland owns more burned CDs than pre-recorded [gekaufte] CDs, and has about 700 songs downloaded onto his computer from the file-swapping program Kazaa Media Desktop.
"I'm going to have to really like an artist to buy the CD," said Brown. He said he downloads free music every day, and he doesn't feel sorry for the record companies or artists.
"They're fine, they still have money to fall back on [enough money]," he said. "In the beginning it wasn't even about the money. It was about the fans."
Kazaa and other peer-to-peer file-sharing systems like Gnutella, Morpheus and FreeNet have radically changed the way teens learn about and get music.
Teens have always been major consumers of music, and with their generally limited disposable [begrenztverfügbar] income, they have flooded [überschwemmt] sites like Kazaa, where they can learn about and download music for free. According to studies, 53 percent of American teens ages 12 to 17 download music files while online.
Three years ago when a federal judge [Bundesrichter] ordered the shutdown [Schließung] of Napster, a popular online file-sharing service, it seemed the entertainment industry had won a battle against online piracy [Piraterie, illegaler Download]. But since then, Kazaa and other Internet programs offering multimedia files for free have flourished [boomen], while sales of pre-recorded music have steadily declined [zurückgehen].
Over the past two years, CD sales have dropped by 16 percent, while blank CD [Rohlinge] sales rose by 40 percent in 2002.
Last week, Sharman Networks Ltd. announced that its file-swapping program Kazaa Media Desktop has become the most downloaded software, beating ICQ, by reaching 230 million downloads worldwide. Napster had about 20 million registered users in 2000.
Kazaa is available for free at and allows its users to download more licensed content than any other application. In a matter of minutes, users can easily find songs, music videos, television shows, movies, games and software.
The debate over the illegal sharing of copyrighted music and media on the Internet is well-known. Critics say Kazaa encourages people to take recordings for free instead of buying CDs, costing the record industry millions in lost sales. Supporters of Kazaa say they are merely taking advantage of a widely used technology that can't be stopped.
The major film and music companies are suing [klagen] Sharman Networks Ltd. and other companies involved with the Kazaa software, accusing them of aiding [helping] copyright infringement [Verletzung] on a massive scale [Ausmaß].
Many record and movie companies and artists have not taken online piracy sitting down. One way they are deterring [abschrecken] peer-to-peer [Gleichaltige] network users is by flooding them with bogus material [gefälscht]. The files are labeled as, and appear to be, genuine [echt] copyrighted work, but contain either no data or the wrong file.
Madonna recently made headlines by flooding file-trading networks with dummy music files that appear to be her full-length songs. When played, however, the files contain not music, but a recording of Madonna's voice saying, "What the ...... do you think you are doing?"
Record companies have also joined forces to create fee-based download services, such as Press Play from Universal and Sony, and Musicnet from BMG, EMI and Warner. However, these sites see far less traffic than the free downloading software sites.
While programs like Kazaa can hurt mainstream artists, many teens say the availability [Verfügbarkeit] of free songs is helping bring underground music to the masses.
"The kinds of bands I listen to, you can't buy their CDs anywhere," said Ben Anderson, a 16-year-old student at Portland High School. Anderson said he downloads about 20 songs each day from Kazaa and has about 300 stored on his computer, mostly hard-core punk and reggae.
"You can find out about bands, check 'em out, see if you like them," he said. "It's a trade-off [Zielkonflikt]. More people know who you are but you get fewer sales."
Anderson, who plays guitar in a band, wants to study recording at Berklee College of Music in Boston after he graduates from high school. He said mainstream artists shouldn't complain about losing money to Internet file traders when "they're ripping off [abzocken, ausbeuten] other artists too."
It's too soon to tell what impact [Auswirkung] Kazaa and other file-sharing programs will have on the future of the music industry, but many teens say they are optimistic that recording artists will continue to thrive [gedeihen].
"They're already making more money than most of the world," said Audrey Lough, 18, of Portland. She said she has one CD with 96 songs burned on it. However, she said pre-recorded CDs sound better than an MP3 or burned CD.
Lough predicts [vorhersagen] that Kazaa will soon meet the same fate [Schicksal] as Napster. "We're getting lucky, being able to have all this free music," she said. "They're going to outlaw [makeillegal] it, I know it. This is so illegal."
Others say peer-to-peer networks are simply another option for consuming music, and music fans will still want hard copies of their favorite recordings.
"Where do you draw the line?" asked Oceana Schiff-Buxton, 17, a junior at Portland High School. "Music is for people to hear."
Schiff-Buxton doesn't have a file-sharing software program on her home computer, but she often downloads MP3s, or digital music files, for free from artists' Web sites.
"I still buy music," she said. "I mean, we still have a record player at my house.".
Tasks:
- Read the text.
- Highlight in different colours: arguments of the supporters (+) and opponents (-) of Kazaa and similar programs.
- Write down the arguments here:
Supporters / Opponents/critics