Stealing singles or albums isn’t a new concept for the music industry. Ever since the days of the cassette, anyone listening to the Top 40 could bootleg tracks off the radio in varying degrees of quality.
Unless you attempted to flog these DIY tapes down a car boot sale, you’d never be caught. For the more adventurous, HMV present a shop-lifting challenge for free physical content and a running contest against overweight security guards.
When the internet came along, the ability to get free music dramatically rocketed. Pioneering sites such as Napster and Soulseek allowed users around the world to share music files once a simple piece of software had been installed. Unlike recording songs via tape, a digital footprint could be traced back to users. This landed a few individuals in hot water and back in 2007 Joel Tenenbaum was one of 35,000 individuals sued by Recording Industry Association of America. And this case is dragging out… on and on and on…
