Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Legal Music Downloads Will Cost You Money

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.

The record companies are noticing who is doing what and from where. The entire music industry loses millions of dollars through music piracy. And although, you might think that your music library does not amount to much, you need to start thinking in more legal terms. The original download of each song and every upload is considering a single cont of piracy.

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.

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.

Most of us remember recording music from our radios to our cassette players but what most of us did not realize is that we were pirating music then, too. The record companies did not have a way to track us and just has to live with the infringement.

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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