Music piracy

Music piracy is the copying and distribution of musical compositions and their associated sound recordings for which the rights owners (composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company) did not give consent. Unauthorized copies of musical works have taken many forms throughout modern history, including sheet music, perforated piano rolls, and recordings of musical performances made or duplicated without the consent of the performers.

In the contemporary legal environment, music piracy is a form of copyright infringement, which may be a civil wrong or a crime depending on the jurisdiction. In the early 20th century, however, loopholes in copyright laws enabled companies to sell mechanical reproductions of copyrighted music, including piano rolls and phonograph records, without compensating the copyright owners or the performers on the recordings. Two international treaties, the Rome Convention (1961) and the Geneva Phonograms Convention (1971), secured protection under national copyright and related rights frameworks to the performers and producers of sound recordings.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw much controversy over the ethics of redistributing media content, how much production and distribution companies in the media were losing, and the very scope of what ought to be considered piracy – and cases involving the piracy of music were among the most frequently discussed in the debate.