Sunday, August 9, 2009

Why Legal Music Downloads Are Better

By John Roberts

Legal music downloads are only legal if you pay for them. Obviously, there are still peer-to-peer sites out there that you can get free music from and it is always tempting to use those instead of paying for your music library. After all, there are so many people out there in cyberspace, how could anyone possibly be worried about one lonely person is doing?

Although there are only two or three cases that actually made it to court, there are thousands of cases that have been settled out of court. Every time you download music for free it will be considered as one count of piracy. And every single time you share that song that is another count of piracy. So you can see how quickly this can grow into a substantial case for the record companies.

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, in today's economy who can afford several thousands of dollars in fines and court costs? The benefit of paying for a song or album is that once you pay for the music, it is yours. You can do whatever it is that you want to do with it. Most of the music sites have taken care of the DRM restrictions so that their customers do have to worry about what happens after the purchase.

Most people only want a track or two off of an album, so you are looking at cost of $0. 99 to $1. 29 per track. This is not a moral decision. By paying for your music upfront you could be saving yourself a lot of money.

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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