The issue of illegal downloading is not something new. The issue gained prominence when Napster was charged for endorsing illegal music files sharing and was subsequently shut down in 2001. However, despite gallant efforts from the music industry, illegal music file sharing is fast becoming an uncontrollable epidemic.
Napster no more.
Source: Sizlopedia.com
In the article 'Young prefer illegal song swaps', it was reported that those using illegal file-sharing websites for music downloads outnumber those using legal services by three times. To make matters worse, those abusing this system are youngsters who do not treat music as a paid commodity. If they are not educated on the concept of paying for copyrighted materials from young, it will be a massive task to change their belief when they grow older.
According to Mark Mulligan, "The digital youth of today are being brought up on a near limitless diet of free and disposable music from file-sharing networks."
Why are the users downloading music from the Internet for free when they know it is illegal? It could be due to the affordance made possible by this online mode (Walsh 2006). Many programs are available for users to get the songs they want for free. If it is available for free, why pay?
Google also raised some eyebrows when they announced their plans to make public libraries available online. They are undertaking the mammoth task of scanning very book and making it available online. Google is also taking advantage of they affordance (Walsh 2006) offered by the Internet, easily reached regardless of the geographical location.
Furthermore, the change of genre (Paltridge 2000) from physical library to online library will certainly benefit the masses as anyone can access the library from anywhere, as long as they are equipped with an Internet connection.
The Google story: From a search engine to Google Earth and now the Google Library Project. What's next?Source: Google
Perhaps we should ask ourselves, is online file-sharing a bad thing? If books are allowed to be shared in physical libraries, why not in an online library? Also, it is common for one compact disc to be shared among few friends. Are those illegal as well? This issue can go on forever.
References:
Platridge, B 2000, Making sense of discourse analysis, Antipodean Education Enterprises, Gold Coast,
Walsh, M 2006, ‘“Textual shift”: examining the reading process
with print, visual and multimodal texts’,
Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 24-37.
Young prefer illegal song swaps, BBC News, viewed 29 October 2007, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4478146.stm>
No comments:
Post a Comment