I remember the first time I heard about LimeWire. I was visiting my family in Austin, TX, and my aunt insisted on showing my mom and I this handy program. My aunt, a digital immigrant, was showing me a program I had never even heard of that performed a task I had never even fathomed. I had no idea this kind of file transfer was illegal. To me, it was the evolving convenience of technology.
This introduction happened several years ago. Since then, LimeWire’s P2P software distribution was shut down in October 2010 after a series of legal battles. According to the September 15, 2011 Music Notes Blog, the finish of LimeWire had a heavy impact on track sales overall. Let’s think about this… I discovered LimeWire back in 2002. My discovery was very likely a later one. How many years was the recording industry experiencing these hits before legal action finally put an end to their losses?
In a world surrounded by the “evolving convenience of technology,” regulation runs at a speed far slower than innovation. How can the government establish long-standing policies to protect the record industry and other industries harvesting intellectual property? Is this even a possibility? With cases like the LimeWire example, it seems that regulators need to expand their focus to prevention. Not only are they behind the curve, they are 8-10 years behind. Maybe these affected industries should invest in researching preventative measures for future obstacles. What suggestions do you have?
I think they should look into working with shut down companies like Lime Wire to figure out what they were looking onto doing next. and then create policies that put a "road block". why not use the resources available to end this struggle that has been going on for so long?
ReplyDeleteI think they should work to make technologies like limewire work in their favor. Pandora and Spotify are both free music platforms that are legal, and I think they both work great. They market the music to you and are paid for by ads. These technologies aren't going to go away so they need to figure how to benefit from them.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree, that the reason these exist are because the government is way too far behind to stop them from happening. People are coming up with new softwares and apps that may be illegal in the future, but are not yet because they are not even on the governments radar. By the time they are, and legal action takes place, it will be long down the line. I agree with Allie above me that the only thing they can do is try to make them work with the law, as pandora is doing.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that, for right now at least, there isn't much of a solution to this problem. While there's a lack of regulation, there's not even a lot of room for creating and enforcing the needed regulation. The government can't just jump in and decide some form of business or website gets shut down. There's too many laws protecting them. That's why it takes about a decade to get anything done. Affected businesses and industries have to gather evidence and prove illegal activity before they can even try to shut them down. There's always going to be antagonists, and in this case, people have super easy and basically infinite access to steal digital material, and it'll probably take some smart people a good while to figure out how to fix it.
ReplyDelete