BigBlue

Who here downloads music? I use soulseek and it costs me $.99/month. I just started earlier in the week and I've got almost 400mb. And no, I'm not concerned about the feds knocking on my door.

ARedetzke

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but even though you're paying for it, it is still illegal to download copyrighted material using Soul Seek. Read the fine print on the sign up page, they just want you to think it's legal so they can get you to pay for their program. I just use iTunes. Costs $.99 per song, but I'm not one to download a bunch, maybe a couple songs a month, and I don't have to worry about those jerks over at the RIAA.
AJ

TomW

iTunes here as well. I limit myself to one album a month. Otherwise I'd be snagging all those albums my ex "forgot" to return to me (all 300 of 'em).

hotdram

'nuther iTunes guy here. Just signed up last month. Don't mind the $0.99 ($1.07 in Texas) per song, because I KNOW I like each song I buy. I got tired of buying CDs for about $15.00 that had 3 good songs and 7-10 crappy ones.

~Rob

phox_mulder

If you aren't paying per tune, then you are still in that "gray" area.


phox

Dr. Evil

Not in the Great White North.....still perfectly legal here (for now at least). The problem is that a lot of the "free" songs are completely riddled with spyware and viruses....so its pretty easy to get hit with the free stuff.

upersleder

my doughters just find friends with the CD they want and bring it home to copy it, then theres always the buy/copy/return method.........

Dr. Evil

technically, thats probably not legal either

nickleinonen

and many places won't take back open cd's or dvd's.. [some will for store credit only]

i use limewire myself... works good... just make sure to virus scan every file i download...

t-15 firefighter

i don't download music but i refuse to buy a new CD anymore. i buy all my CDs off of ebay or from record exchange stores around the area. i refuse to do business with a corporation that sues it's own customers. i agree that downloading has caused a drop in CD sales but sueing your own customers is not the answer.

the RIAA was found guilty of price fixing and forced to offer a $20.00 voucher to anyone that bought a CD between a certain time. it was okay for them to try to screw us but when the shoe is on the other foot... thats a different story. i also used to be a huge matallica fan but i will never listen to them again. any band that sues it's own fans is way out of line. bands don't make much money from CD sales. most of their money is earned from touring. i also used to listen to everclear until i read a quote from Art Alexakis on the RIAA website. and i quote "you are taking money out of my kids mouth". lets see there Art, you made over 30 million dollars last year alone. kiss my you know what! i would have put something else if lary would have let me

britt

BigBlue

I may still be but oh well. I think it's horse stuff anyways and I'm not to worried about it.

hotdram

I don't think anyone wants to kiss your elbow anyways Britt

~Rob

t-15 firefighter

smiller

I hope all of the iTunes users realize the amount of DRM (digital rights management) restrictions they are getting in the bargain. Apple has been very tight with licensing their 'Fariplay' DRM scheme, meaning that you can play iTunes tracks only where Apple decides to let you. Want to buy another brand player someday and play the music library you have paid for? Sorry, not allowed.

You can burn the track to CD and then re-encode into MP3 or similar universal format, but that takes time and entails a quality loss since you are performing lossy encoding on the same track twice. I've know a number of people who were pretty ticked to find out that they had to go thorough this hassle in order to play music that they paid for on another brand player. Most other download services (the legal ones, anyway) use Microsoft's DRM format which is supported by a great many players, in fact just about all of them except the iPod... but Microsoft's DRM still has restrictions of its own of course.

If you want music that you actually are allowed to use as you see fit for your own personal use (which is perfectly legal under the 'fair use' provisions of copyright law) you are pretty much stuck with buying and ripping CDs (again, completely legal for your own personal use, and if you buy on Ebay or Half.com can end up costing less than .99/track, and for better quality at that) or going with one of the illegal download sites.

And the RIAA wonders why people download illegally?

Begle1

I don't think that anybody wonders why some folk download music...
Some folk use Bearshare and Limewire and download nearly 50 gigabytes of music... If some folks used iTunes, then some folks would have music collections worth 10,000 dollars. If some folks used iTunes, then there is no way that those same folks would have every Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Eric Claption, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Metallica, CCR, Fleetwood Mac, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, KISS, Van Halen, Rush, Ted Nugent and ZZ Top song ever released. (Some folks are pushing 100 GB, guys...)

Some folks did break laws. But also, some folks say it is worth the risk. Especially when some folks used the downloaded material as "resource information".

Some folks think that some music should be under fair use policies as long as it isn't being used for profit. Some folks also think that more books and movies should be available for download.