France to Subsidize Music Downloads to Combat Piracy (Current Event Article)

Music piracy- the stealing of music, is a major controversial issue around the globe, and almost impossible to prevent because of the technology we have today. P2P sharing networks, torrents, the ability to "rip" music off websites have allowed music listeners to obtain music without any cost, which is severely hurting the music industry, including the music artists.

In order to prevent music piracy, France is the first country to show valiant efforts in preventing this issue. As French culture is very distinct in keeping traditional ways, the government names this initiative "Carte Musique" to maintain the French pop culture and not using technology to steal music. This "Carte Musique" program primarily targets citizens of "12 to 25-year olds" as it will allow these citizens to buy a "50Euro gift card for the price of 25Euros" and the rest will be paid by the French government. Moreover, these gift cards, much like an iTunes gift card can only be purchased once a year, but online music providers are to lower the price of songs/albums so that the card serves its purpose and its value. Unfortunately, iTunes and Amazon will not be participating in this initiative because the "Carte Musique limits the benefits each website operators may receive from the program."

In my opinion, in agreement with the class discussion, this initiative is quite creative on France's part, and I do believe it will be successful only in France to an extent. With the technologies available today, such as hacking, and music blogs that share instant music, citizens in France are still going to download and steal music off the internet no matter the price. Though, it's a very true effort amongst the French to make these citizens get into a habit of paying for their music and purchasing media through the "Carte Musiqe" program. Unfortunately, if this was ever to come to the United States, it'd sure be a failure. Each person in the world with the little bit of knowledge of computers, has DC++, Limewire, or knows how to rip music off the internet. Our society wants to avoid costs on any product they can, unless they are true fans of the artist and want to support them.