The demand for new music releases and the strong urge to obtain them by any means possible has led to an increase in online piracy. Many choose to take advantage of online media hosting sites rather than purchasing physical copies of new music releases or purchasing anything at all. Sometimes, people find themselves in the position where, if they had the choice of downloading an album at full price or downloading it for free with the possibility of contracting a virus, contracting the virus would be less of a concern for them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay If we think about it, piracy has been around longer than we think. Whether it's transferring music from a tape to a blank tape or burning an album for a friend onto a disc, it's still considered illegal copyright. Sharing music online has a pretty negative impact on sales of CDs, vinyl, and even online sales through websites like Amazon and iTunes. As a result, the music industry has suffered huge financial losses and tried to fight pirates with legal action, but it can never be stopped completely since there are so many people downloading illegal media content in the United States alone. sites are gradually blocked. More recently, MegaUpload.com, a very popular media sharing site, was shut down in May this year. MegaUpload was known as a "cyber locker", a website set up with multiple sources to download and stream files from its 50 million daily users, like the original Napster.com which was the first file-sharing website on the Internet. It was launched in 1999 and was shut down by court order in 2001. (Parlof) According to the indictment, MegaUpload's operators earned more than $175 million in illegal profits and caused an estimated $500 million in damages to copyright holders. (Fritz)Many attempts have been made to prevent copyright. In most cases, they increased the risk of being caught and prosecuted for piracy, even if for a short time. The copyright protection reform adopted in Sweden in April 2009 reduced Internet traffic by 18% in the following six months. It also increased sales of physical music by 27% and digital music by 48%. (Liang and Adermon) This shows that the only way to prevent online piracy is to scare the people who take part in it. The last major attempt to try to stop online piracy was made in January 2012, at the suggestion of the “Stop Online Piracy Act” or SOPA committee. SOPA would be used to prevent unauthorized information from leaking to certain places where it shouldn't. Internet service providers would block access to certain websites, and the law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, securing a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison. (Band) SOSA was not passed because of the great threat American citizens believed it posed to their Internet security. Internet companies would be able to monitor user activity much more closely. (Maybe too close.) Many disagreed with this. Many sites try to avoid lawsuits by taking an even more creative approach to sharing free music. Instead of hosting the music directly on their personal site, they will link to several cyber locker websites that contain the files the user is looking for. These sites display various messages promoting support for artists.