Youth averse to piracy, torrents

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This “cloud” will spell relief, but of a different kind. Legitimate sharing of songs over cloud could come as a welcome change to musicians and record-market that is reeling under piracy.

Remote storage of material on a server for all to use, or simpy, “cloud-sharing” of licensed music files, could be the future. RIM recently added a new music service to its popular BBM module that will allow users to share songs with other subscribers. Apple’s iTunes initiative too discouraged pirated content to an extent. And though the nuances of the just-launched service are yet to be clear to subscribers, it’s got people talking. At a time when youngsters are doing their bit to curb piracy and corruption, paying a small royalty for licensed music content isn’t unwelcome, says Prashant Roy, a student of IP University. “Youngsters follow Ovi, iTunes and BBM music service’s concept also will promote buying music (and deter pirated content to an extent). But all this is limited when compared to the reach that Internet, P2P and torrents have these days.”
Though few think that BBM’s new service that allows users to share songs with other subscribers will indirectly dent piracy, it remains to be seen how effective it can be. Prateek Rangra, physiotherapist and an iTunes user, says, “It may help fight piracy but we’ll have to wait and see, for this is exactly what we thought when Apple launched iTunes. And later on it was ‘jail broken’ and pirates began downloading all content for free. So, you can only speculate.”
Seconds, Yashwant Thakur, an iTunes user, “Neverthless it’s a step in the right direction since they’ve tied up with music companies to provide this service, and directly/indirectly the benefits will trickle down to the artistes too.”
But those who battle piracy in the music industry say it’s a multi-headed monster that won’t easily end by legitimately downloading 50 tracks per month (as is the case in BBM’s music service). Calling torrents and peer-to-peer downloads the major source of piracy, Venkat Varadhan, filmmaker and music composer, says, “Universally, one can download/use upto 30 seconds of someone else’s creation for their own commercial use. And that is the legitimate limit and the moment it touches the 31 second mark it becomes a copyright infringement. So the first step towards eliminating piracy is to make torrents a source of digital rights, wherein a particular producer or director gets his share each time someone downloads their films/music.”