1. Downloading Digital Media
Past, Present and Future
Roberto Soto
Dustin Freidman

2. Legal History of Internet Downloading
The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act deems that the act of copying copyright music is illegal.
It is legal for you to purchase a music CD and record (rip) it to MP3 files for your own use. Uploading these files via peer-to-peer networks would constitute a breach of the law.
The penalties for breaching the copyright act differ slightly depending upon whether the infringing is for commercial or private financial gain.
In Canada, downloading copyright music through peer-to-peer networks is legal, but uploading those files is illegal.

3. Surge In Swapping and Pirated Sales
Napster was the first to present a program that combined a music-search function with a file-sharing system igniting the popularity of using a computer to find music.
The value of the pirate market was estimated at $4.6 billion in 2002, an increase of 7% on 2001.
The market share of legal music downloads remains tiny compared with sales of bootleg CDs and the traffic for music-swapping services.
More than 50 million pirate music discs were seized in 2002, up sharply from the 13 million reported in The vast majority of seizures were in South East Asia and Latin America.

4. Piracy Statistics Most Common Forms of Pirating
Territory
Estimated Capacity: all disc formats (million units)
Total Legitimate Demand: all disc formats (million units)
Taiwan
7600
230
Hong Kong
2700
150
China
2500
700
Malaysia
1600 65
India
800
160
Singapore
720 73
Thailand
500 53
Poland
320
120
Russia
300 70
Indonesia
190 17
Czech Republic
170 37
Music piracy totals 1.8 billion units: Disc piracy up 14%
The global pirate market is estimated to have totaled 1.8 billion units in Disc piracy rose to an all-time high of 1.1 billion units, which represents a rise of 14% on 2001 and is more than double the 510 million units sold in The pirate cassette market fell by over 20% as pirate discs continued to replace cassettes.
1 in 3 Discs worldwide is pirate

5. The Future of Digital Media