Executioner's Outline

I. Thesis Statement: Millions of dollars have been spent, lost, and won in this battle, and it isn’t anywhere close to coming to an end. Every day more and more people start downloading music illegally from programs like these for many different reasons, regardless of the consequences.
A. Strategy: State the major programs used and that the recording idustry is trying to stop them
II. Downloading music has become more and more popular over the past couple of years.
A. 95% of music today, that is downloaded online, is done illegally (BBC News).
B. Since last year there has been a 25% increase in music downloads (BBC News).
C. 7% decrease in world's market value
III. Since downloading music illegally through certain programs is free, more and more people are gravitating towards it.
A. Economic crisis causes people to illegally download music.
B. State Convience and ease of illegal programs.
C. In 2008, over 40 billion songs were downloaded illegally, and just 1.4 billion legally (BBC News).
IV. Although downloading music for free is very helpful and convenient for you, the consumer, it is a very harmful action that affects the music industry financially as well.
A. The music industry has lost between 700 million and 1.5 billion dollars due to the growth in illegally downloading (Facts about the Music Industry).
B. Total album sales fell 14% in 2008(Facts about the Music Industry).
C. Nearly 33% of all music sales in 2008 were done illegally(Facts about the Music Industry).
D. The global music industry $12.5 billion and 71,060 jobs annually(The Price of Piracy).
V. There are many lawsuits that the record industry has filed against both individuals who illegally download and share their music, as well as programs that allow you access to any music or other files that you want free of charge.
A. Lawsuit against Kazaa (Graham).
B. State how this led to other major lawsuits.
VI. The recording industry looks very hard at these cases, and takes the illegal downloading and sharing of music very seriously.
A. Minnesota woman sued for $1.9 million (Winter).
B. Boston University student sued for $675,000 (Associated Press).
C. State how much you can be sued by under federal law (Associated Press).
D. The RIAA has sued more than 30,000 people over the past few years, with most of those cases settling out of court for a few thousand dollars (Kravets).
VII. In August of 2008, the government passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act which is set to take effect in July of 2010.
A. Tell what the Act states and everything that's involved (Greenwood).
B. Approximately 85% of all recorded music that is sold in The United States is from an RIAA member (RIAA).
VIII. Concluding Strategy: State how people are causing the music industry to suffer by illegally downloading music.