Downloading and Swapping of Music Files
We believe that by now, most of us would know about at least a couple of mediums to download music files or trade music files for free. As all of us are music lovers in the group, we'll talk about the pros and cons regarding swapping and downloading of music files as a consumer and also in the industrial point of view.

Let us first elaborate on the negative impact of free music trading/downloading. Tons of advertisements and lots of reminders from the entertainment industrial companies regarding stopping of piracy have been put up for several years. Their motive is clear; don't spoil their business, if you want good productions, support originality. Music artists spend time and effort to come up with a particular product furnished with hard work and looking forward for the fruits of their labor but was not paid off due to music downloading and swapping. As a result, the sales of their albums dropped tremendously and the recording companies losses heaps of money after investing millions into their music productions. After all, we would understand why recording companies are putting up law suits after law suits against infringement, that's simply because they need to protect their business, their rice bowl similarly the music artists.

When we stand in the view point of the music industry, we could vividly see why music and recording companies are so concern about this raising problem. Swapping and downloading of mp3s doesn't just impact on one industry but it let others to have an idea of how to manipulate using the internet to infringe on other files as well. Another clear cut example was the video files whereby people can download the latest blockbuster movie before they are even launch; one of them was the famous Star Wars series. Some Chinese websites are able to get hold of the movie before Lucas could do a world wide launch on one of the popular episode "The Phantom of the Menace". Many entertainment companies are now trying their best to protect themselves from these infringements by promoting public awareness regarding this raising issue. Our group had acknowledged their hard work as it is not an effortless task to accomplish as downloading and swapping of files not just music files had became part and parcel of everyone using the internet nowadays.

Some companies affected have also raise concern regarding inadequate amount of protection they get from laws that passes down by government of different countries as some countries does not even have laws that focus on illegal downloading and swapping of files. Therefore, the problem is back to square one for these companies in some countries. Furthermore, the internet is way too huge to track down websites that upload music files for surfers to download and there are like too many programs to shut off that allows user to swap files e.g. Torrent programs. But their efforts were not ineffective as some of us are now aware of the problem and knowing that by downloading music files or any other copyrighted items from unknown websites besides the original producer, are consider breaching the law, thus fines and penalties were unavoidable once caught doing so. We feel that through promoting public awareness about infringement on copyright production, educating them regarding the difficulties and problems that these entertainment companies face and the cause and effect of continuous downloading and swapping of music files in the future, will be among the best method to counter this current raising problem. With these persistent efforts in place, we are sure that one day these infringements will stop.

However, in the viewpoint of the downloaders, some might not think like we do, questions and answers like these are given when asked about the violation of copyright productions;

"Why do I need to pay for the whole album when I only like one song?"
"Since I could get it for free why not?"
"It's not like I'm the only person downloading"
"I don't care about the future of these companies"
"Original albums are expensive"
"There are so many downloaders out there, I won't get caught"
"Oh, downloading of mp3 is wrong? I didn't know"
"I like so many songs, it's not possible to get that many albums"

From the above questions and answers given, we could tell that not many are concern about the problem these companies are facing and by all means they will continue downloading and swapping through the internet whenever possible. This is one of the major drawbacks that entertainment company faces, people simply don't care. Although, we believe that most of them who download and swap music files already knew ages ago that, it was wrong to do so and will trigger law suits and violation of certain rights. However, as long as they get what they wanted, as long as they are happy about and not get caught, and most importantly as long as they are FREE, they will swarm to it like bees to honey in which for Singaporean's case. It's pretty sad to see some people actually ignoring the whole issue totally and continue downloading and swapping of music files through the internet.

After taking some time to look through and think about the questions and answers given by some of the people, we could tell that recording companies have already taken action to solve some of the problems encountered by these people. For example, recording companies have set up websites to let people download songs for as cheap as $0.99 per song and trial copies of these songs can be downloaded for free. Prices of original album have been cut down to less than $20.00 a copy which was like $25++ few years ago. Link up with well known computer companies e.g. Apple to come out with products like the iPod that offer instantaneous downloading and swapping of music files legally wherever you are with a very low cost. With these implementations and adjustments made, we hope to see a fruitful result at the end of it.