You Brought this on YOURSELF!!!!!!!

When something is "Copyright," that means it's for that person and ONLY that person....

Ha ha ha, the funny thing is, NOBODY CARES. Especially not the Internet. Downloading has become a huge factor in the past several years. Instead of paying for it, GET IT FOR FREE or cheap. Sounds great doesn't it? Besides going to jail, there's definitely some bad that comes out of illegal downloading. Let me explain.......

CDs

Everyone including myself has notice that CD sales has gone downhill in the past several years. I know its 2007, but i would like to show you an example with the comparison of CD sales in the year 2004 and 2005. In 2004 CD sales were at 650.8 million. In 2005 it went down nearly 50 million,with Cd's selling 602.2 million. That is a huge decrease, and I'm pretty sure people didn't just decide to all of a sudden not buy Cd's. Could "Illegal Downloading" be the reason why? Of course it is, in 2005 downloaded music reached 332.7 million, an increase of 148% on the previous year. Wow! what a big increase. I'm not even done, during the Christmas period in 2005, downloads shot up with a 9.6 million being sold. The biggest week on record for download sales. So just judging by the 2004-2005 statistics, you could only expect the worse for 2006.

Artist

What really sucks is that artists, such as, Dipset, JAy-Z, Keisha Cole, and Jadakiss are working so hard and putting all there time and effort into making a great album and they end up not selling as much albums as they should have and losing a huge amount of money because of illegal downloading. Whats the point of copyrighting a CD if people are still stealing it and making a profit for themselves. If i was in these artist position, then i would really be pissed off because the government keep saying that illegal downloading is a Federal offense, but its still being done and hardly anyone is being arrested. While Artist are paying there own money for studio time, and trying there best to promote there Cd's, some idiot is already outside with a bootleg copy of there album and selling it on the streets. Very unfair situation for the artist, making good music is there "job," and selling the albums is how they get paid. Artist basically need illegal downloaders to STOP STEALING.

DVDs and Movie Thearters

Not only did Cd's have a downfall in 2o05, but also DVDs with a 23% decrease. But unlike Cd's, DVDs increased again in 2006, so obviously people still want the real DVD instead of the bootleg version. Movie thearters has also felt the negatives of illegal downloading. As if they don't make billions already, movie thearters would make even more money if people weren't getting the bootleg copies. Illegal downloading really hurts some actors and actresses because some of them get paid a little money up-front then gets the rest on movie thearter and DVD sales. So if the movie or DVD doesn't sell, then they don't get paid.

IPODS and LIMEWIRE

This has to be every atrist and actors nightmare that came true. The creation of the IPOD. At first the IPOD was a great idea, and had so many positive aspects. It was small, easy to use, you could download all different type of songs, movies and videos on them. You could purchase your songs on Itunes or just buy some Cd's on put the songs on the album, onto your IPOD. But...... now the Negative aspects. People were doing illegal downloads of Cd's, so the government should have known that they would do the same for the IPOD. And that's where "LimeWire" comes up. Limewire is a site where people could download movies, videos, and songs for FREE onto there IPOD. Could you imagine how much illegal downloading increased after the IPOD was brought into the market. IPOD is a CD player, DVD player, and TV all put into one. So if the government, artist and other people want to blame someone, don't blame limewire, they should blame the creators of the IPOD. Every new device you make, we make sure we use it, either for FREE or CHEAP.

How I Feel about this......

I'm not gonna lie, I have purchased more than 100 bootleg Cd's and DVDs when i was in high school. And I've downloaded more than 1000 songs from limewire onto my IPOD. But......... every year CD prices have increased. Look how much Cd's cost nowadays, $23.99 for a new CD. that's a rip off because it cost less than a dollar to make a CD. Do you really think people want to pay that much money for a CD that they will listen for for maybe a month then forget all about it. Same thing goes for DVDs and movie thearters. In certain stores new DVDs goes from $21.99-$29.99. So much money for a movie that is less than 2 hours long. And in Manhattan, movie thearter prices are ridiculously high, $11.50 to watch ONE movie. That's just crazy. What if the movie sucks? That's nearly $12 down the drain and it could have been spent on something important such as food or transportation. So truthfully, like i said from the beginning, NOBODY including myself cares about what you copyright, when these outrageous prices lower then maybe and i mean MAYBE... people might stop downloading illegally. EYE for and EYE.

References-
BBC News, Entertainment (29 december 2005).

US CD album sales show 7% slide, January 31, 2007, from

http://newsbbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4566186.stm