Media Art Reflection 8 Impact of Illegal Downloading
Nowadays, illegal downloading is a biggest problem against producers and manufacturing corporations. Illegal downloading is illegal share informations by uses the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia, documents or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include manual sharing utilizing removable media, centralized servers on computer networks, World Wide Web-based hyperlinked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking.Illegal downloading involves some issues of copyright. Illegal downloading also will impact some film or music production companies, influence their profits, and exclusionary rights.
James Burbidge side: “Dodgy DVDs and increasingly, illegal downloads, cost the film industry massive amounts of revenue every year. A report in 2005 for the Motion Picture Association (all the big studios) estimated that the studios lost $6.1 billion a year and that the industry as a whole (theatres, cable tv etc included) lost $18.2 billion. At the time it was estimated that of that $18.2 billion, $7.1 was due to internet piracy. There are few people, I feel, who would disagree with the suggestion that that figure has risen. This loss of revenue will obviously cause serious financial problems for the studios and is certainly contributing to their current downfall.” His article show us all the big studios will lose how much money yearly. This is a huge wastage for a large proportion of studios.
In the Industry Canada website, they make mention of “Royalties would be affected if private copying reforms were to influence the extent of legal downloading. A recent study based on U.S. data suggests that of the 99 cents consumers typically pay for a digital download, 8 cents goes towards the mechanical royalty, 3 cents to the producer and 7 cents to the artist. With the expected growth in legal downloading, these payments should become a more significant source of revenue for rights holders.Private copying reforms may affect legal downloading in two ways. First, private copying levies will affect the price of legal as well as illegal downloading. Price impacts are likely to be very small, however, given that the elasticity of demand for recording media is (with the possible exception of DARs) quite low and that changes in blank media purchases do not lead to corresponding changes in private copying. Second, a law limiting the regime to authorized sources only would support other reforms intended to discourage unauthorized file sharing and could help encourage a shift from copying from unauthorized to authorized sources. This may be more important, but it would be difficult to separate the potential contribution of private copying reforms from the impact of other social and legal changes, including other amendments to the Act, that underlie the growth over time in legal downloading.” Illegal downloading is a huge issue of copyright’s equity. So reduce and control illegal downloading can stick up for companies’ profits.
The Government should step up efforts to control this unlawful act. Just like that can help some companies maintain their rights.