Sunday, August 9, 2009

Why Legal Music Downloads Are Better

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.

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.

Although most piracy cases are settled out of court, people are still looking at fines that can range well over the thousand dollar mark. The initial suits are for millions of dollars and that scares most people into settling their cases. There is the possibility of paying thousands of dollars for just one popular song that you may have.

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.

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.

They have a legal foothold to sue those that do have legal music downloads. According to the piracy laws, when people used to record music onto a cassette from the radio, they had a right to sue. They just did not have a way to track the people that were doing it and the music industry just had to accept the loss.

Since the age of the internet, everyone can be found sooner or later. So, it is best to pay for legal music downloads now. You are getting the better deal when you consider the alternative.

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