May 10, 2006
As I have said before and as someone who works in the music biz and has to deal with copy right issues etc etc - downloading music for FREE is ILLEGAL!!! Full Stop!
If you donwload or P2P share music, be it MP3 or any other format, you are basically stealing, you are robbing the artist, writer, producer, composer, record company, distributor of income which they earn from royalties. It's like you slogging your guts out and then not getting paid at the end of it.
Every radio station, tv station, pub, club, venue etc that plays music also must pay royalities in the form of buying wither a PRS or MCPS licence. In most countries the amount payable is worked by using audience figures, how far your transmission area is etc etc. (I won't go into the ins and outs as it's very complicated)
Just the same as when you buy music, the money you pay gets split between all or the afor mentioned people.
People are now being successfully sued and taken to court for downloading music by the record companies. They gave been given fines and very often jail terms for holding thousands of music, video files on their computers. Record companies are now wise to sites like Kazaa and deliberately upload fake files with just loops of a few bars of the song, or by the time you finish, you end up with 20 minutes of silence, not to mention a few viruses to boot!
Now - interesting issue - what happens in a country like the UAE, where there are no copyright laws? People here get away with so much it's not true! But copyright laws WILL be introduced here and very very soon, then alot of people will have a lot of work to do!
There are so many cheap download sites now which are legal to use. 99 cents for most tracks, plus downloads are now accounting for chart positions. American artist Gnarls Barkley was the first artist ever to hit the UK number 1 with a track which was only available on download. So the record companies have now conceded that the downlaod market is far bigger than the cd singles market.
There are a few free download sites, but these are normally special sites approved by companies to preview their tunes.