Monday, August 17, 2009

Legal Music Downloads Will Cost You Money

By John Roberts

Legal music downloads are the only way to go for right now. Many people are still using peer-to-peer sites to obtain their music. The mentality is that there is probably so many people out there doing it that no one will ever take notice of the average college student that just wants a few tracks for their digital music player.

Since the music industry is losing million of dollars through piracy and that they have successfully won several battles, they are taking notice of who is doing what out there in cyber space. They have the money and the time to go after the worst offenders. Several counts of piracy may not seem like a big deal but when you consider that every original download is one count and every upload is one count of piracy, the numbers can start to skyrocket.

Depending on how much music you have pirated, you can end up owing the record companies thousand of dollars. Some people have even racked up over a million dollars in fines and copyright fees. Most of the people that are caught not using legal music downloads are college students or average citizens. The record companies will often settle out of court and have only made examples of a select few.

By paying for legal music downloads, you buy the song and the right to do what you want to with it. Any DRM restrictions are handled by the music site before you even consider purchasing a song. Although it is best to check and make sure that the site has handled the DRM restrictions if you are not using one of the big name music sites to get your music.

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.

Now they have our IP addresses so we are totally traceable. Whether you want to admit it or not, legal music downloads is the only true way to protect yourself and your future account balance.

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