Week Thirteen

What’s the value of a bit? It seems that going after folks who have traded songs or movies online is a huge expenditure of effort and money. Is DRM-protected content the way to go? If you don’t agree, propose another method for the distribution of digital multimedia so that content creators can still be compensated.  DRM stands for digital rights movement, which prevents infringement of illegally downloading music from the internet. Obviously when you create something you hope it will be successful. When a singer completes a song they are waiting for the revenue from the song. If people are illegally downloading the song then the singer is losing out on the revenue. When the internet became popular sharing music online became a trend as well. People would share music fro free, which is illegal. Soon there were investigations and people were fined for illegally downloading music. Not only were people fined they were arrested. As a result people stopped downloading music illegally and iTunes was created. At a low cost people could download music online without a penalty. Today almost all of my friends download their music from iTunes and I rarely hear of people downloading music form illegal sites. The cost of illegally downloading a song could cost anywhere from $200 to $150,000 according to Abelson. Knowing this information could change someone's opinion about downloading music illegally online. I am sure people still download music illegally online, but there are not that many options as to where to find these websites and there are several restrictions. In the long run I do not think it is necessary to arrest or fine people for illegally downloading music. It takes too much time and effort to find these few people and there is little success or value in charging these people. Even though there are restrictions from iTunes dealing with transferring the music it is much safer and smarter to buy songs from there instead of downloading it illegally.