People ARGH! have been sharing and copying music intended for others for decades but only recently have they been tagged as "music pirates". As a "music pirate" myself, I take offense with being compared to the blood thirsty and ravenous pirates of yesteryear who were widely known to kill, rape and pillage with out a motive other than to fulfill their own base desires. I on the other hand, along with the majority of other "music pirates" do not partake in the murdering of the innocent, the rape of prized Italian virgins or even the plundering of defenseless Oceanside villages. The pirating of copy written music started innocently in the 1970's with the introduction of home cassette tape recording devices. Men and women would record their favorite songs off their own or a friend's vinyl record, the radio, an eight-track player or even from a live concert. Often times these men and women (mostly men) would record a strategically thought out array of songs that they found to be especially romantic or meaningful onto one of these cassette tapes in hopes of swooning that special someone. Although these recordings were often extremely low quality their sentimental value is higher than any of the 320 KBPS (kilobytes per second) or FLAC files that are available to us today because of the hard work and thought that was involved in making them. This truth is made evident in Stephen Chbosky's modern day classic The Perks of Being a Wallflower. In this novel the main character, Charlie is able to use the power of the mix tape to
gain acceptance and friends. Although the sound quality of the mix tapes got better over the years, music pirating essentially didn't change until the nineties. The Nineties dawned the introduction of the Internet to the general public and with that came the invention of a program millions of people still remember and hold near to their heart. It was called Napster. Napster gave people the ability to download single tracks from their favorite artists. With the songs they downloaded, people would often create mixes on Compact discs with ease. With the newfound ease of creating mixes, the novelty of the mix waned but the simplicity of it was a worthy trade off. For millions of users Napster seemed like it was too good to be true...and it was. Although there were similar programs made available to the public after Napster was shut down including Kazaa, Limewire and Morpheus none of them could compare to what Napster had to offer. They were filled with spy ware and viruses causing irreversible damage to hundreds of thousand of their users' personal computers. As computers got more advanced, peoples hard drives got bigger and bigger. This allowed the every day person to rip every compact disk that they own onto a personal computer. As this happened millions of people began not just burning innocent mixes for their friends and loved ones but actual full-length albums and giving or trading them with the world. This process lead to extremely poor sound quality in some cases as people would often be ripping and burning a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and so on.
After Napster got shut down in 2001 there weren't many alternatives to downloading music unless you wanted poor sound quality or spy ware that would lead to the destruction of your computer until torrents came around. Torrents were and are to this day an extremely reliablesource of acquiring music. You don't have to worry about spy ware, viruses and poor sound quality. (Often times, there are not only high quality CD rips, but also actual vinyl rips made available, trumping the quality of an every day CD rip.) As torrents got more and more popular entire online communities started popping up, the most sought after and infamous being Oink!.In order to gain membership to Oink!,one had to be invited by what was known as a "Power User." (A user who had a share ratio of over 1.05 and have uploaded a minimum of ten gigabytes.) It was nearly impossible to gain access to this community unless you were close friends with a power user. This caused Oink! to be as exclusive as the most expensive gated community and expensive it was. If you didn't personally know a power user, often times oink invites would for go sale on different forums for hundreds of dollars. Although this practice was banned by the administrators of Oink!,it was almost impossible to track, making this banned practice extremely wide spread. The power users who went by the books would often times test the music knowledge of groups of people in forums and give the winner a coveted invite. Just like Napster, Oink! was too good to be true. On October 23, 2007 it was shut down through a collaborative effort by: Interpol, The British phonographic
Industry (BPI), The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and other agencies including the Cleveland Police department. Being a former member of Oink's Pink Palace, I remember this day just like I remember September 11, 2001 or an old-timer might remember the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked. I can recall the exact moment I heard the news. It was one of the rare mornings I woke up in time to catch breakfast at BYU-I's galley. As I was enjoying my vegetarian omelet, the only other "oinker" I knew of on campus came up to me and asked me if I heard the news and proceeded to dish it out. I couldn't believe him until I saw it for myself. I was in denial. Without delay I rapidly inhaled my food and instead of going to my American Heritage class I ran back to my dormitory and punched Oink's pink palace's address into the URL box and hit enter. The second the site finally opened I knew it was all over, it read, "This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FICD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution... A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's user." This statement struck fear into my very soul. I was not only mourning the death of something I loved but I and hundreds of thousands of other Oinkers had to live with the fear of being prosecuted for the thousands of songs we each downloaded and shared. Thankfully no user has been prosecuted as of yet. With the death of Oink! brought other bit torrent based file sharing communities including waffles and what?. From what I hear, they both are pretty formidable but I wouldn't know first hand...I still haven't gotten an invite. For
Torrenters such as myself, who aren't members of private communities, there are open ones, most notably Piratebay and Isohunt. Although these websites serve as an invaluable resource for poor souls such as myself, it comes with a risk. Since it is open to the public, it is also open to federal and private agents from different corporations. While leaching or seeding a torrent, these agents are able to identify the other seeders or leachers' IP addresses and subsequently identify their persons. Often times they will give a warning call, which usually scares the pirate into stopping altogether, but more times than not they will be subpoenaed and have to pay a fine of about $3000-$5000. In October, a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas who tried to fight the record industry's subpoena ended up having to pay $222,000 for having 24 illegally downloaded songs on her computer. Equaling out to $9,250 per song. (Reynolds) In China, there is no RIAA and music piracy runs rampant, so rampant that legitimate businesses will sell pirated copies of albums more often than valid copies and the Chinese artist seem to have accepted it...even embraced it. The chairman of the International Federation of Phonographic Industry has been quoted with saying that "The business model for the record industry worldwide is moving toward resembling what we see in China today." This would put an end to the record industry as we know it and enable artists to either sell compact discs independently or permit the public to download their songs for free. This would both eliminate the fear of being caught by the RIAA and subpoenaedfor the millions of people who currently illegally download music, but more importantly it will give the average person more incentive to buy their favorite recording artists'albums. This is due to
the fact that consumers would actually be giving their money to the artist rather than the greedy record companies who own them.