Universal Music Group needs to follow all the ethical and legal standards the community holds just like every other company. There are four main responsibilities a Corporate Social Responsibility framework suggests to follow in order to stand as a positive company in the industry and local community. The first is to be economic. This means that the company’s main goal is to be profitable and maximize revenues. The second is to be legal. A company should obey the laws in which it operates. Third, the company should be ethical. It is important for a company to not participate in questionable business and regulate the company standards around what the community finds to be ethical and unethical. The final responsibility in the framework is to be philanthropic. It is important to be seen as a positive member of the community. It will keep relations with investors, media, and other companies positive if your company is seen as good corporate citizens.
A main problem that Universal Music Group comes across is the public’s desire to attain music from signed artists for free. It is neither legal nor ethical to download music from an unlicensed source. Illegally downloading music has been a major concern among the music industry and companies have suffered great economic loss due to the decrease in CD sales. It would be unethical for UMG to not allow anyone to use their songs but can a barrier be placed to determine who can and cannot lease the rights to a song? The barrier would limit who can have the rights to license music. The main question would be then, who would determine if a requesters reason is legitimate enough to believe they won’t copy it or offer it to the public? There is a gray line between legal and ethical issues but this legal issue music labels are facing needs to place new regulations on the matter to stop the public from taking advantage of the company’s ability to lease out the rights to their music.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment