Melissa McCluskey
Professor Scott MacDonald
Management 3110
19 April 2016
Music industry: Ethical Issues in a Digital Age
This all began with the phonograph invention by Thomas Edison. This invention
created the music industry we now have. The most critical thing needed to transfer music
files from one computer to the next is a software program that causes the file to be
transferable. This can be done legally or illegally. The first company to create this
software program was discovered by a college freshman, Shawn Fanning. Fanning
dropped out of college and created this program that allowed users to search other
websites for available MP3 files. Not too long after Napster was designed, the Recording
Industry Association of America filed a copyright-infringement suit against them because
of their program creation.
Something very similar ended up happening with Kazaa. This company used
Napster’s idea to create their own file-swapping system. Over one billion files were
traded each day at one point in time. The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Kazaa. Napster
and Kazaa stated that “it could neither control nor be responsible for the illegal actions of
its users.”
The RIAA decided to start suing individual users that downloaded or transferred
music illegally. One person was charged $1.5 million for downloading twenty-four songs
illegally. This occurred from June 2003 to December 2008. The RIAA stopped suing
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individual people because it was not making any type of impact on decreasing the illegal
downloads of music.
iTunes changed everything around when it was released in April 2003. Everyone
knew this program was going to be successful only after two days because of how many
