For and against - Anna García

Music internet piracy is causing serious problems within the global society, especially the music industry. Music internet piracy itself has resulted in big music companies in losing millions of dollars every year and is progressively growing. There have been many strategies been adopted by the music industry to combat music piracy but any of these have not had the ability to stop it. However, there are both positive and negative aspects of pirated music.

On the one hand, by downloading and distributing artists mp3 files, pirates are advertising for the artists and exposing others to their music for free. Another benefit is that the majority of the pirating generation are teens who are not exposed to the means to legally purchase the music that they like to listen to. It is clear that its easier for them to download them for free. 

On the other hand, Stealing is defined as taking and claiming any item without the permission of the rightful owner. That is exactly what pirating is.  And theft is a serious crime in the eyes of law enforcement. A further drawback is that Not only do artists lose money due to pirating, but the recording labels who invest their money in the artists do, the people who advertise for the artists, and the loyal fans end up having to spend more money to legitimately support the artists to make up for the money lost due to pirating.

To conclude, music piracy not only affects the music companies and artists, but it also brings negative effects to all of us as well. An example of recent case is that music companies tend to hike prices of music albums to recoup their losses due to music piracy.  I partly agree that stealing music from pirate pages damages the artists' earnings, but also allows everyone to be able to listen to whatever music they want.