Sunday, August 9, 2009

You Need To Pay For Legal Music Downloads

By John Roberts

Millions of people download music from the internet but we all need to be careful that these are legal music downloads. It is easy to be tempted to download music for free on peer-to-peer sites but this practice can lead to a very massive legal headache and fines in the thousands of dollars range.

The record companies are noticing who is doing what and from where. The entire music industry loses millions of dollars through music piracy. And although, you might think that your music library does not amount to much, you need to start thinking in more legal terms. The original download of each song and every upload is considering a single cont of piracy.

Many peer-to-peer sites will download a song from several sources so you do not have control of how many times you are sharing music. If you have just one popular song, you can owe thousands of dollars from just one song. Most suits that the record companies' pursue end up settling out of court.

However, the average person cannot afford several thousands of dollars in fines so it is best to pay the money upfront and save you the headache in the future. Since many of the legal music downloading sites have taken care of the DRM restrictions, once you pay for a song you can do what you will with it. You can share the song, put it on your digital music player or copy to your own CD mix.

Ultimately, it is not about right or wrong. This is about saving you the headache of court battle and the possibility of paying fines in the future. The average song costs about $0. 99 to $1. 29 and buying an entire album can often be cheaper in the long run, so whether you agree with the music industry or not does not matter.

Before the age of cyberspace and peer-to-peer sharing, the piracy laws were written that even buying an actual album and loaning it a friend was technically breaking the law. The music industry could not stop this, so they just had to accept the loss. They no longer do today and they are not going down willingly.

It the best course of action is to pay your money upfront and happily trot off with your music to do what you will with it. When faced with alternative, is there a better solution?

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