40
place to protect one of the biggest monopolies in the world, and therefore these
copyrights should not be enforced. “It is, after all, the purpose of copyright to promote
the creation and dissemination of expression in the marketplace, not to protect large,
existing industries from new competition.
66
” It would be premature to think that
copyright is totally unnecessary. Copyright laws were important in helping to start and
grow the music industry. “In all, copyrights and the protection of intellectual properties
from counterfeiting and piracy, have played an important role in the growth of the music
business. But royalty income losses from piracy remain substantial and widespread
67
.”
Regardless of what copyright law is, the issue of piracy remains a big one, and so far the
use of lawsuits has done little to deter consumers from downloading music.
The lawsuits by the RIAA did little to stop P2P networks and also hurt the image
of the music industry as it was seeking to pursue legal action against its own customers.
This drove more people to file sharing and P2P networks as they looked to fight against
the monopolistic record labels. Since the emergence of Napster, many more programs
have emerged to allow users to share music and other files over the web. Users of
KaZaA, another program similar to Napster, download more than 160 million songs each
month
68
. Also, as of June 2009, another program, Morpheus, had been downloaded 173
million times and Limewire had been downloaded 181 million times
69
. As file sharing
has grown exponentially as the go to source for consumer to get music, the record labels
have failed to maintain a presence in the industry. Since the emergence of Napster in
66
Welsh, Jared S. p. 1497
67
Vogel, Harold. pp. 203-204
68
Hajdu, David. The iPod Blues
69
Bender, Mark T. and Yongsheng Wang. “The Impact of Digital Piracy on Music Sales:
A cross-country Analysis” International Social Science Review. p. 158