Is music file sharing killing the music industry or reviving it?
” It has been understood for some time now that the Internet – and the technologies it supports and enables – has presented a challenge to the world’s music industry. This is not small stuff. Pop music – and the whole galaxy of related entertainments it supports – is a very big business. The Internet, and in great particular, the development of file-sharing – uploading and downloading digital musical files – has made the control and access to pop music a very contested issue. It is now, and has been for some time, possible to download pop songs and albums from the Internet. The ability to copy, file, share and pool that Internet users have means that there is now an avenue to swap pop music – and other forms as well, but pop is the big seller – between users using software like KaZaA, Morpheus, Grokster and a host of others. This has been seen as a very great threat by some record companies, and some musicians. Access without purchase it is argued is the same as theft; it is a violatio
