Music to the Ears

Everybody's doing it. Your brother. Your sister. Your neighbour. Your best friend. Downloading music illegally has become a common internet reflex and in no way thought of as illicit or dangerous. It is not stealing,but sharing.

Everybody’s doing it. Your brother. Your sister. Your neighbour. Your best friend. Downloading music illegally has become a common internet reflex and in no way thought of as illicit or dangerous. It is not stealing,but sharing. However record labels do not share this opinion and have begun going to rather extreme legal lengths to penalise copyright infringers. To date,millions of dollars have been paid in damages. But as the belt tightens,illegal music downloaders seem less and less likely to stop their unlawful ways.

An estimated 95 per cent of all internet downloads are done illegally. In India alone,losses to artists and record companies total up to roughly Rs 150 crore. However,the victims dont end there. In the US,Jammie Thomas-Rasset was fined $1.9 million for downloading 24 songs in June. Joel Tenebaum,another American,began his court case last week. If found guilty,he faces $4.5 million in fines.

These recent scare tactics arent enough to deter Jayant Shankar,21,who has been a full-fledged internet pirate for the past three and a half years. For him,its the only place to find good quality music that,according to this fledgling copy editor,is extremely lacking in India. His motivation is simple; my hunger for music is much,much larger than my wallet. Shankar is confident that he will be protected by the anonymity provided by the worldwide web,hiding among the masses. I used to worry about getting caught,but I got complacent after a while,and now its not an issue.

Luckily,Shankar and those like him,have absolutely no cause for concern. Though a recent change in Maharashtra law has made illegal downloading punishable with a one-year jail sentence,only website operators will be prosecuted. Anyone who downloads is safe.

Indian Music Industry (IMI) secretary general Savio DSouza explains that the key issue is cooperation with the music industry itself,and that just isnt happening. In order for the IMIs anti-piracy team to go after copyright infringers,they first need to ensure that there is a copyright to infringe. For this,the music industry would have to provide an enormous database housing all copyrighted material. This does not yet exist in India. In the seven years since the creation of the anti-piracy team,it has shut down 600 websites.

I think that within the next three to four years,no one will sell music anymoreit will all be free, says Ashutosh Phatak,musician and producer with Blue Frog Recordings. For him,trying to stop music piracy is quite simply an exercise in futility. The sooner the music industry embraces the current situation,the sooner it will find new ways to make money for artistes, Phatak continues,highlighting the recent shift in emphasis from recorded music to live shows.

And without fear of crushing fines (or even being pursued in the first place) and the prospect of unlimited music without paying,just imagine all of the concerts tickets one could buy. First,the internet surfing,then the crowd surfing.

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