Music Piracy Argument

 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/website-pays-950-000-for-pirating-the-beatles-20110328

The argument that is being made in this article is the issue of music piracy and what should be considered illegal vs. legal. In this case, a website called BlueBeat run by Media Rights Technologies was shut down by a federal court for selling MP3s at a low price without permission. They were selling music from bands such as The Beatles, Coldplay, and Radiohead. This was before The Beatles music was released on iTunes, and the songs were going for as cheap as 25 cents. Ultimately, they agreed to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit for $950,000, however before that they attempted to claim that they were doing nothing wrong because the songs were not the originals. The argument presented in the article makes it clear that this does not stand in court. The controversy present in this argument is what actually defines something as piracy, and whether certain actions are illegal or not. On one hand, anything that is a version of a band's song that is illegally distributed should be a cause for punishment, but some may argue that if it is actually not the original of the song that it is fair game. The stasis of this argument would be in between the opinions of what piracy truly is and what the consequences should be. In my opinion, I think that both sides of the argument have their reasons, however in court, anything that is from an artist or band that is illegally distributed will most likely lead to some sort of settlement or punishment. The argument that copies of music that are not the originals are not piracy has too weak of a justification to stand in court.