Is downloading free music the same as theft?

1. Is downloading free music the same as theft? 1
Is downloading free music the same as theft?
Caleb Adkins
Chayanon Saisuk
Toshiki Nakamura
Marshall University

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Writing an essay or report for a class can be difficult in certain aspects. Finding the right
information, finding a way of wording the information without plagiarizing and other factors
come into play when writing a paper. To find information that is helpful and reliable for a paper,
can be found by using a college’s databases. Most colleges have a database through the library
that allows student to have access to documents, article, and factual information that will not
show up first on google. Some people may ask,” How is this information from this database
reliable?” The answer is that in the databases, students can find information that is scholarly
peer-reviewed and non-scholarly. Scholarly peer-review information is either published or
reviewed by a scholarly source. Sources such as a university or a scholarly authority are reliable
ways of knowing it’s scholarly peer-reviewed information. Non scholarly is created by someone
without an outstanding authority on the information. This would be something not very factual,
mainly opinion based. Information that is scholarly peer-reviewed, is known to be more reliable
than a non-scholarly reviewed piece of information. Most scholarly peer reviewed information is
found in academic journal. College professor like seeing source that are scholarly peer-reviewed
because that means the information is factual and has been critically broke down in all views.
Also it shows that the student has done research in a different way instead of using google.
Professor usually accepts non scholarly information, but may deduct points for it.
In today's world people listen to music almost constantly. Yet, the problem of today, is
people downloading free music off the internet. Understanding that some music is published
online for free, yet most is illegally downloaded. People debate as to whether or not downloading
free music off the internet is the same as stealing. The determining factor in the debate, is if the
music was meant to be free to download or if it was illegal placed online to be download. With
the music being released on the internet for free, by the rightful authority over the music (artist,

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record company, copyright lawyer, etc.) then it is not stealing. Yet if a song was released on an
authorized site and someone took that music file and released it on another site for free
download, then it is stealing. It is stealing because the music was not originally released for free.
The creator of the music and the company that published the music is losing money because of it
being released for free on an unauthorized site. According to a research done by Gartner, the
music business is expected to make 7,729.6 million dollars in revenue for 2015. With this
number a person would think that downloading a few songs for free would not hurt the industry
that bad. Illegally downloaded music may be free yet cost the companies lots of money. It also
hurts the artist and everyone that helped create the song. Illegally downloading music is also a
crime in most countries.
In the article “College students' moral evaluations of illegal music downloading” by Marc
M. Jambon & Judith G. Smetana, they point out the problems in a number of ways show how
much the original lost profit. According to both authors there is approximately 60-90% of
teenagers between the ages of 18-24 years old that download media illegally. Also in the article,
downloading illegal music is theft. The research from the article shows prove and what might be
the reason that people in the age of 18-24 years old are downloading illegal music. It’s because
the price of the legal music is considering high for teenage. As a result of that the profit from the
original has been decreasing from before which the record companies used to earn about 90%
from the sales. From all the things mention above it happen only, because most of college
student think that is not that bad that would harm them. With that it make a lot of thing getting
worst because the more people think like is the less the production going to get profit. It’s the
artist and the company right to legally own the copy and earn from it, but now since the is
nothing that keep students or teenagers from downloading illegal music the problem is going to

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get worse. That brings it to the next step, which according to this article the solution for this
situation would be to starting the test or teach to those who still new to this type of moral in
downloading music legally.
For the article evaluation this article is a persuade type, because the article explain how
bad it is to download illegal music. One thing that is shown in the article is how some ideas that
would change the way people think about download illegal music. Moving on to the type of
journal, this is scholarly journal because the both author specialize on this type of topic that have
to do with moral. For the organization on this article I would said that author did well, it starts
with the basic information then moves to something deeper details to persuade. This article
would be in a center not liberal or conservative, because is still explain how bad it is to download
illegal music. For the publish date of this in 2012 and this article also useful because it still new.
Lastly for the audience for this article it would be mostly for those who teach or work on
education.
In the article “Why The Music Industry May Gain From Free Downloading”; The role of
sampling, by Peitz Martin & Waelvroeck Patrick, This article talk about how downloading
online illegal product would affect the owner or the creator. What happens in this article is that
people stop buying the original version of music and turn to the illegal one because they think
that it wouldn’t harm them. And it only possible because the spread of the online copy that is
now so easy to find illegals field. Due to that the effect that has been increasing is the drop of the
sale each company has. It’s not just a little drop no we are talking about a very big drop like
about 90% of the original sale they earn. It’s all began from pear to pear sharing process, which
lead to nonstop sharing fields. That alone start the sale to drop and most of the fields that was
sharing or publishing illegally has been permanent for the new user to download at any time. As

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long as there is a first version that allowed use test the music, the problem with the illegal copy
would never end; but there is a thing that prevent the creator from doing it, which is showing the
consumer how the work is before they buy the original price. That is very hard if not impossible
because most people need to know what they are getting before they buy it.
For the book evaluation on “Why The Music Industry May Gain From Free
Downloading”; The role of sampling, by Peitz Martin & Waelvroeck Patrick, the purpose of the
article was to inform the reader on how downloading illegal music effect the creator; however
this article is scholarly journals that doesn’t persuade but its more on the center. This article was
publish on 2006, which is a little old but not too old for the topic. For the authors and audience,
both of the authors are will educated and also expert on the moral topic, and for audience they
focus on general audience that not too old or too young.
For the evaluation of this book, purpose of the book is to persuade. The book shows
examples of how downloading music illegally negatively affects societies, markets, and artists
from reliable sources like major companies, well-known people to convince how bad it is. The
publisher of this book is professional and the name of publisher is World Scientific. This
company academically publishes scientific, technical, medical books, and journals. The publisher
is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in Hackensack, New Jersey, London, Hong Kong,
Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chennai, India, Taipei and Israel with over 200 employees. This
book has logically well-organized table of contents. Every single topic is clearly recognizable
and identifiable with numbers when you click topic, it breaks down into more details therefore
you can easily jump into pages where you want to go. The date of publication is very important
because our topic is “downloading music” it is very much associated with technology.
Technology is always changing every day and this book was published in 2010. I cannot say this

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is very up to date, but this is not out of date either. I think this is not bad. The author of this book
is Hamid Jahankhani is a professor of University of East London. His principal research area for
a number of years has been in the field of cybercrime, information security, and digital forensics.
Also, he is the editor in chief of the international journal of electronic security and digital
forensics published by Inderscience and general chair of the annual International conference on
Global security, safety and sustainability. He has written seven other books. The book has the
bibliographical references however; I could not find where it is. The name of this book is
“Handbook of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics” and this entire book is not relevant to
the research topic nevertheless some parts of this book is critically useful. The book covers the
topic mostly and comprehensively. It has got a variety of examples and opinions about the topic.
I think the type of audience for this book can be almost anyone from general readers to scholars.
The level of this book definitely appropriate for my needs, because it has a professional out look
of contents which most college students need as a source. There are no charts in the chapter
where I used as a source of my topic.
Using a college's database can help students out in many ways. First, the database allows
for many different resources to use to help increase the reliability of sources in a student's paper.
Professors look highly of scholarly sources and give better grades with papers that have them.
Along with increasing one's grade, the student can also save money by using the databases to
find information for free. Most of the documents in the database cost lots of money to get a hold
of. With the database a student can save hundreds of dollars in purchasing document and books.
Also the databases filter out all the information one does not need. Google filters sources to a
certain point, the databases allow a student to filter out certain sources in ways to find more
reliable source. A student can filter the sources to only be scholarly peer-reviewed or non-

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scholarly. A scholarly peer-reviewed source is more reliable than a non-scholarly because the
sources has been reviewed or created by a person with knowledge of the topic. Also a student
can filter out the time range of the information. Certain topics overtime losses reliability, an
example, a technology article done in 2004, would not be as reliable as an article published
today. This saves students hours of searching a regular search engine to find reliable sources.
The databases also give different ways to cite sources. The databases will bring up the citation
for the source in each of the popular formats. The citations will be in MLA, APA, Chicago, and
Harvard for almost every source. This helps students be able to cite the information they use in
their papers to prevent from plagiarizing the information. This assignment has caused myself as a
student to rethink how I research topics and what sources I should use. Google has always been a
primary way of researching information since I was a child. Now with this database, I can
research information to a deeper point. I can find reliable sources from people and companies
that specialize in certain topics. I have a strong view on illegally downloading music. I have
always thought that it is morally and ethically wrong. I find it to be the same as breaking into
someone's house and stealing items. The only time it is acceptable is when the music is published
by an authorized site. The song being published by an authorized site means that the artist and or
writers allowed for it to be free. I am a very moral person in doing what is right versus what is
wrong; illegally downloading music makes me feel as if I am stealing from that person directly. I
feel this way because this is a person’s work of art or job and I have taken it for nothing. Those
people have put time, money, and effort into creating this music and I took it for nothing in
return. That is the basic line in people between stealing illegally downloadable music and free
music online.

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Reference Page
Gartner. (n.d.). Estimated end-user spending for online music worldwide from 2008 to 2015
(inmillion U.S. dollars). In Statista - The Statistics Portal. Retrieved June 18, 2015,
fromhttp://www.statista.com/statistics/276500/worldwide-online-music-revenue-
forecast/.
Jahankhani, H. (2010). Handbook of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics. Singapore:
World Scientific Publishing Company.
Jambon, M. M., & Smetana, J. G. (2012). College students' moral evaluations of illegal music
downloading. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 33(1), 31-39.
doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2011.09.001.
Peitz, M., & Waelbroeck, P. (n.d.). Why the Music Industry May Gain from Free Downloading -
the Role of Sampling. International Journal of Industrial Organization.
doi:10.2139/ssrn.829544.