Downloading and Sharing Music off the Internet
Illegally downloading and sharing music off the internet for free is a huge controversy in these days. Many people say that the music is once bought by someone and then shared so they are not hurting anyone. Companies and musicians, on the other hand, have a different view. They argue that they made this music so downloading and sharing their music free off the internet is an indirect violation of copyright laws. With regard to this controversy, I think downloading and sharing music off the internet is not much a problem if people pay some money.
Imagine that you are a composer who makes a song or a musician who actually sings a song. As a composer, you spend much time to make and complete one song. As a musician, you work hard to successfully sing it. In fact, every song is the result of artists' hard work. I strongly think that these producers of songs should be rewarded for their efforts and accomplishment. They are not allowed to make much money if the song is downloaded for free every day. Also, they can go bankrupt if the public only downloads their music for free. Some of them have already gone bankrupt because the public does not purchase their music.
It's also understandable that people want to enjoy music for free. The truth is that the CDs cost a lot these days. People, who download music for free on web pages, claim that it is really no different than recording a song played on the radio. Also, they say that there is always a good chance that people download songs of artists they have never heard before. If they like what they hear, they may become a fan and that artist can make money from future purchases by that fans. Moreover, artists still can make more money with their concerts and commercials where they lend their music.
However, as consumers, people can find ways to support the artists. There are ways for producers to make sure that no one downloads music for free and one of them is to make people pay a fee before they download music. Other ways include making sure that only less than half of the music or some parts of the music are able to be downloaded for free. But in my opinion, the best way is to put a charge on each song so people can pay money when they download it. I strongly believe that this way meets the demands of both producers and listeners.
In conclusion, I think downloading and sharing music off the internet is good but doing it for free is wrong. Even though the cost of CDs is high and downloading music seems to be no different than recording it from radio, the producers including songwriters and singers deserve to be treated fairly for their hard work and accomplishment. Downloading copyrighted material without paying for it is theft. So, if you want to download and share music off the internet, I recommend you to pay certain amount of money. This is the right way.
First, thanks for sharing your essay with us.
ReplyDeleteI read your essay and thought your solution to this problem is very realistic and reasonable. But the 3rd paragraph seems out of focus to me. It says something contrary to whole essay. It is good to introduce opposite opinion to support your idea, you should put those adequately and then prove the opposite is wrong. Because you advocated producers and then defend people who are not willing to pay money, it made me a little confused while reading – even though you wrote perfect solution in next paragraph. Maybe switching the order of the 2nd and the 3rd paragraph can be one of the ways to avoid this confusing.
Except that, structure, flow and others were all good.
I agree with Dajeong Choi in that you didn't make enough refutations. The whole 2nd body paragraph seems like a concession. While reading, I expected a certain refutation about that, but you wrote just 'as consumers, we should pay for downloading music'. I think this is not enough to make your main idea strong. It would be much better if you explain 'why downloading music freely is wrong even though CDs cost too much or ....'. And one more thing, I think your thesis statement 'With regard to this controversy, I think downloading and sharing music off the internet is not much a problem if people pay some money.' doesn't seem clear and strong to me. because you used 'not much a problem', there is a possibility to make readers think that you are not against free-downloading.
ReplyDeleteBut other things like details are nice.