DEA

The Digital Economy Act 2010 is an Act of the Parliament of the United KingdomPeter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, it received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010, and came into force on 8 June 2010 regulating digital media. It establishes a system of law which aims to first increase the ease of tracking down and suing persistent infringers, and after a minimum of one year permit the introduction of "technical measures" to reduce the quality of, or potentially terminate, those infringers' Internet connections.

The new process, which will come into force when Ofcom's regulatory code is approved by Parliament, begins with rightsholders gathering lists of Internet Protocol addresses which they believe have infringed their copyrights. (This data could be gathered most easily by a rightsholder connecting to a Peer-to-Peer download of a work they own, and noting the other IP addresses to which their computer connects.) They would then send each IP number to the appropriate Internet Service Provider (newly-defined in the Act as a provider of IP addresses) along with a "copyright infringement report".The ISP must then send a notification to the subscriber in question. The conditions under which this is required (i.e. the standard of evidence required) are not specified in the Act, but left to Ofcom's regulatory code. The report and its recipient is noted by the ISP, if valid, but no further action is taken.

Obligations on ISPs

The Act gives Ofcom the responsibility of enforcing ISPs' obligations. A fine of up to £250,000 can be levied on those in contravention; that limit can be raised by the Secretary of State with Parliament's consent.

The Act also allows the Secretary of State to define, with the consent of Parliament, the "sharing of costs" incurred from the Act's legal processes. The order can require reimbursements to be made by rightsholders and/or ISPs, and in the case of appeals, subscribers.

Legal VS Illegal Music Downloading

Legal Downloading sites:

iTunes Store, Tune App, Napster, Zune Marketplace, Amazon MP3, Nokia Music Store, TuneTribe, Kazaa and eMusic.

The websites above are well known legal music websites that allow you to purchase music from them. The types of downloads on these websites are encoded with digital rights management which means copies of the song can not be made. The times online said that "The internet is the big battleground. Piracy remains rampant, with more than seven million illegal file-sharers in Britain alone. Shops such as Woolworths and Zaavi have collapsed, further depressing CD sales. Albums, which bring in the most amount of revenue to record labels, have been hit by digital websites such as Apple’s iTunes that allow users to “cherry-pick” their favourite singles. Falling revenue has had an inevitable effect on talent." An example of this is artists such a Lily Allen who has stopped her music career due to the increasing numbers of illegal downloading. Artists put in a lot of hard work,effort and revenue into making songs for the majority of the public to just download the songs for free. This means being a song artist does not pay as much as it used to when illegal music downloads were unheard of. Artists will now generally rely on their physical sales of singles and albums and their music tours.

Technological change is occuring very quickly in the world and the times online says "“By 2012 half of all telephones will be smart phones and we’ll see impressive growth in ‘access’ music services such as Spotify,” Mr Ek (who owns 47% of the music site spotify) said. “The overall industry will be worth $40 to $50 billion dollars and, if you look at how internet companies develop, there will be only a couple of really dominant players. We hope to be one of them.” New technology now means its easier to share and download music at a fast rate. By 2012 the industry is said to have lost £1.2 billion pounds. The digital market is growing strongly but not at a sufficient pace to offset the damage being done by piracy. Although there is a lot of downloading it does not necessarily mean a 'lost sale' because when you can not find the song to download freely the public often will then turn to buy the item. It also widens the range of audiences that listen to there music as everyone can access this music for free but only some may be able to purchase the songs.

Illegal Music Downloading Sites:
LimeWire, FrostWire, Bearshare, 4 shared

In 2010 Lime wire was finally shut down after a 4 year court battle in the US. It was said to have intentionally caused a "massive scale of infringement" by permitting the sharing of thousands of copyrighted works by its 50 million monthly users.

This link shows the extent of how many illegal music downloaders there are in the UK.
BBC news article on Illegal Music Downloading
'Around 7.7m people have illegally downloaded music this year, according to research commissioned by the British record industry's trade association.'
The statement above shows just how many people are illegally downlading music. The music industry suffers extremely from these types of downloads and costs them millions.
The amount of people downloading music is getting out of control and it is very hard to try to catch everyone committing the crime. It has been said that warning letters may be sent out to those being caught in order for them to stop downloading. However it is hard to identify the culprit as they may be in a household with other computer users.

Music Industry

TECHNOLOGY
The internet has made it incredibly easy to access illegal music websites. The search enging 'Google' has also made this easier; by typing in free music downloading into Google generated 468,000,000 results in 0.17 seconds.

Records --> Cassette Tapes --> Cd's --> MP3 downloads --> ????

The range of technology in today's modern society is changing all the time, what will be next???

ITUNES
iTunes launched on April 28th 2003. Itunes are always in competition with illegal music sites which means consumers can access their music for free without paying iTunes prices. To counteract some of these effects iTunes have extended their previews or songs and also increased advertising. They also cross promote their products for example the apple iPhone comes with iTunes pre loaded onto it.

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8645878.stm
The Music Industry sells Compositions, Recordings and performances of music. "In the 21st century, consumers spent less money on recorded music than they had in 1990s, in all formats. Total revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads in the world dropped 25% from $38.6 billion in 1999 to $27.5 billion in 2008 according to IFPI. Same revenues in the U.S. dropped from a high of $14.6 billion in 1999 to $10.4 billion in 2008. The Economist and The New York Times report that the downward trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future —Forrester Research predicts that by 2013, revenues in USA may reach as low as $9.2 billion. This dramatic decline in revenue has caused large-scale layoffs inside the industry, driven retailers (such as Tower Records) out of business and forced record companies, record producers, studios, recording engineers and musicians to seek new business models."