Week 6 EOC: Illicit

The movie illicit is about the black market and dealing with several forms of illegal activity, and how they are all intertwined. Illicit even brought to light that almost every industry is affected by the black market, and how just buying knock offs of bags like Gucci, Prada, or Louis Vuitton. It even states how pirating (which affects me as an audio industry professional) promotes the black market which in turn promotes human trafficking and drug wars. The war against music pirating is something that will be hard to control. There is pro's and con's to pirating but there are so many more con's than there are pro's. Pirating affects not only me as an audio producer, it affects the music labels selling the CD's, the artists who created the music, and also the people working at the places of employment that distribute these CD's. It affects our economy because the lack of revenue at the places of distribution (I.E. Wal-Mart, F.Y.E., Sam Goody etc...) cause employers to cut hours or even employees thus putting people out of a job. Pirating music does not support the music industry what so ever it only hinders it. A huge example is the music franchise H.M.V. music outlets closed down. They are the equivalent to the United States F.Y.E. music outlets. Also pirating affects the quality of music being released. Artists are finding it harder and harder to survive, at one point the artist made revenue off of CD sales now it is left up to concerts and tours to pay their way. Bigger and well known artist are even feeling the heat. The only way to fix the problem of music pirating is to create awareness. We need to show people that there is a cause and affect pattern to downloading a song. Do not be hypocrites, and only support the cause and then go download music ourselves. No every person and every song makes a difference. Every knock off bag walked by and not bought makes a difference. You will no longer be supporting drug cartels; instead you will be supporting the people who spent their time and creativity into making those original products. You will get the true quality and the feeling of satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing, of knowing that you did support the artist behind that record or bag. Every person counts. Make the change. I know i will be from this day forward.