Rough Outline

This band is one that I heard on a recommendation from my friend who shall remain nameless. He torrented their work and I was so moved by them I bought their album. I now rub it in his face because he can’t get a copy of it.

A quick outline of my argument is probably difficult to come up with on the spot, or even after about an hour of thinking. First, a definition must be made; not only of piracy, but also of independent music, mainstream music, and many other terms related to the online distribution of music, like DRM-locked media and digital ownership. Many people get these terms confused, and often switch some of them with each other, leading to the ironically hilarious news articles, or even news broadcasts if a news network editor doesn’t catch the mistake either. On top of all those intro definitions, I’ll need to detail why piracy is such a bad thing in the first place, because some people can’t make the connection that downloading music for free is illegal and stealing. As much as I was kidding, I’ve met people who sincerely believed that torrenting was perfectly legal. Another key definition is lost sales, what they specifically mean to the industry, how piracy causes them, and how piracy doesn’t cause them.

With all the definitions out of the way, I can begin comparing the impact of piracy on independent musicians as compared to mainstream musicians, the easiest and most apt comparison available; pirating e-books does happen, but in such limited quantities because they’re almost all universally direct downloaded in one file that can’t be uploaded anywhere else, short of copying word-for-word everything in the book into a Word file, while video games and movies make such insane amounts of revenue they are in a league of their own counting or discounting piracy. Comparisons can be made for their attempts to counter piracy; mainstream music, largely the record labels, push forward bills causing the definition of piracy to be wider than the Grand Canyon, while indie musicians work around it and accept that piracy happens. If it sounds like I’m biased, I slightly am, being an indie musician and having put content on YouTube, if SOPA/PIPA passed, I would be in jail presently.