There are many issues with copyright infringement, and copying music has been climbing the charts.

Stealing music and copying parts of a song have been problems among artists and the general public for decades. One famous example involves ex-Beatle George Harrison and the Chiffons. He was found guilty for “unconsciously” copying the Chiffons’ song “He’s So Fine” in his song “My Sweet Lord.” Harrison’s hit was made in 1971 and the songs were said to be very similar in composition. “He’s So Fine” contained a five note phrase and a three note phrase that were both similar to phrases in Harrison’s song “My Sweet Lord.” It was a lawsuit that expanded over several years, up until the 90’s. An artist may be guilty of music infringement even if only parts of a song or a few notes are copied.

According to an article on copyright infringement in a series of articles on legal issues, a copyright is violated when a person copies, distributes, performs or displays all or part of a work that is copyrighted without the permission of the owner of the work. There are other ways to violate copyrighted work than having an artist steal from another artist. A person could sell “pirate” or bootleg recordings of an artist’s musical work, which would be music infringement, too.

As technology has advanced, so have the ways of violating music copyright laws. Music infringement has become easier for the general public to violate due to programs on the computer or the internet. Certain Web sites include free MP3s online, which take away from the sales of the artist’s work. Programs including Napster and Limewire have had issues in the past with people downloading many songs and making money off of copyrighted music. Congress passed a law in 1992 addressing these issues. It is called the Audio Home Recording Act, which allows people to make home recordings of music that has been prerecorded, as long as the people do not record for commercial use.

As recently as 2006, Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit against the MySpace Web site for copyright infringement. The lawsuit says that “[n]o intellectual property is safe in the MySpace world of infringement — not Plaintiffs’ videos, not Plaintiff’s songs, not even songs from [an] unreleased album…” Universal stated that MySpace encouraged copyright violation, and that the company became “one of the most prominent and valuable websites on the Internet through rampant copyright infringement.”

Programs such as iTunes allow consumers to purchase each song for $0.99 in the iTunes store. There are thousands of songs available in the store. This makes sure that people do not violate any copyright laws since they are actually purchasing the songs.

Another issue involving music infringement or even buying songs online is that music sales have declined. According to an article on music sales, compact-disc sales in the first three months of the year 2007 have dropped 20% from 2006. Over 800 music stores closed for good in 2006. iTunes has even become the top music retailer in the United States.

It all started with lawsuits like George Harrison’s and grew into something bigger as technology advanced.