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Everyday millions of kids are committing theft in broad daylight. Their parents don’t care, they’re stealing too, or asking their children to do it for them. No one tries to hide it and no one calls it stealing. People who wouldn’t shoplift a stick of gum or take more than one newspaper from a street rack think nothing of stealing music. This is an issue that is rocking the music industry and cannot continue if we, as listeners, want to hear new songs and new artists. By now, most people know that distributing copyrighted music over the Internet is as easy as checking your e-mail. Millions of people download music from the Internet, robbing musicians, recording companies and retail stores of profits. I do it, you do it, and our neighbors do it. If we all continue, there will be no profit for anyone in the music industry. Artists will not make the money that they deserve and will, in turn, stop making music. New artists will not want to put their lives and life savings into a market that doesn’t seem to be a profitable one. Someone downloads the music onto the Internet, and everyone else swoops in and takes it. This is called file sharing. Despite the court-ordered demise of Napster, hundreds of other downloading sites are thriving. The three most popular sites, Kazza, Morpheus, and Audiogalaxy, have a combined 70 million active users (www.musicunited.org). Let’s say for example, the average amount of songs those 70 million users have is 25, that is 1.75 billion songs that are being shared for free.
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