♫           Local musicians defend music downloading

♫           Piracy pillages music industry  

Illegal Free Music: Downloads with Consequences
December 13, 2004
By Jeremy Horwitz, Editor-in-Chief of iPodlounge.com

Six years ago, the sheer quantity of open challenges to American copyright law created a popular perception that music - old and new alike - was supposed to be free, and "shared" between friends and strangers alike. Upon release of just about any new album (and sometimes even before), full MP3-format tracks appeared on music-sharing services such as Napster and Kazaa, spreading around the world without restriction. Many recording artists were angered by what they felt was mass theft of their music, while others either ignored or embraced the file-sharing.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) decided to fight the "music is free" movement, undertaking highly publicized lawsuits on behalf of artists it represented. Services such as Napster were sued for billions of dollars as facilitators of copyright infringement, and either driven out of business or forced into retreat. Subsequently, RIAA lawsuits against individuals shut down large resources of "shared" music, and warned others that swapping smaller quantities of copyrighted content could subject them to similar legal action.

RIAA lawsuits haven't stopped the trading of copyrighted music online, but they've turned file-sharing into a game of Russian Roulette. For obvious reasons, iPodlounge does not recommend the sharing or downloading of "free" music from file-sharing services unless you know for sure that the artist has specifically given permission for that music to be shared.

Non-U.S. Music Download Sites: 

A Dangerous Gray Area

The average person should be aware that there's likely something wrong about getting entire free albums for nothing, but what if they were offered for four cents per song, instead of ten or more dollars per album? If you pay something for your downloads, is that enough to protect yourself from being sued?

That's the question posed by a few fly-by-night web sites - often operated by individuals outside of the United States - that purport to offer penny-per-megabyte downloads of popular music. One of the more notable, AllofMP3.com, offers a surprisingly robust collection of albums from major recording artists in the compressed audio format of your choice, More amazingly, songs are available for download at rates of under 10 cents per track, and the site has claimed for months - without public legal challenge, at least - that it is operating legally under Russian law. Competing site Weblisten.com offers a similar downloading service from Spain. Other sites offering similarly priced downloads of major recording artists' products, such as the Spanish site Puretunes.com, have been sued and shut down.

iPodlounge doesn't take a position on the legality of any of these specific sites, as they operate under foreign legal systems and may or may not be entitled to offer the pricing and unprotected files they are selling. We urge our readers to exercise caution before assuming that any "purchased" music from these stores is a replacement for store-purchased CDs or licensed tracks from established domestic vendors of digital music.

Thank you to iPod Lounge: http://www.ipodlounge.com/articles_more.php?id=5754_0_8_0_M