Is using Kazaa for downloading music illegal?

[blay]

[Wandering Kid]

its technically illegal to download/upload songs. however, you cannot be prosecuted for downloading songs because you arent the one breaching copyright. the person sending the song to you is breaching copyright. therefore, you have no fear from the law as long as you dont upload. however. not uploading anything is against the spirit of file sharing and if you do this you will find yourself remote banned with alot of users who refuse to share files with you.

lastly, there are over 60 million kazaa users that share stuff every day. this does not include any users from soulseek which i regard as a largely superior p2p network to get music. the RIAA can scare you by issuing a subpeona. a subpeona is basically a letter which informs you that legal action is being taken against you. it costs nothing to issue one of these but it does cost money (alot of money) to actually sue you for breach of copyright. its not feisible for any record company to sue all kazaa users and in either case, its difficult to prove whether you owned a copy of the songs you copied. you could for instance have sold on the cd during the time in which legal action was taken against you. you may have lost it. in many cases you could have paid cash for the cd so there is no financial record of your purchase altthough the onus is on you to prove you bought the cd. it is correct that you are allowed to make a single copy of a cd that you own for personal use or backup purposes but it is illegal to share this copy. so yes, trading cds is technically illegal too but plenty of people do it all the time. however, in the unlikely event that law calls you to question you have to have proof that you purchased the cd (receipt etc) or you are up shit creek. since ive paid cash for quite a few of my cds and lost most of those receipts i dont actually have any proof of purchase except for the cd itself which will suffice. but. i bought sonic youth's daydream nation years ago and lost the disc. i downloaded the songs off of soulseek cuz i miss that cd, one of my favs from a long time ago. as such i have illegally made a copy because i cannot prove that i purchased it. even though i did.

in either case, the chance of you being singled out is highly unlikely. 1 in 60 million? you have a better chance of being struck by lightning. it is also cost prohibitive to the record company or the RIAA to sue many people. they issue subpeonas and like to put out ambiguous threats that it 'may' be illegal to download music. the legal action they do take is normally against the big fish - the people on corporate networks that have hundreds of upload slots and share hundreds of files per day. it is in a record company's best interests to take these 'hub' users out first rather than digital screams who only popped to kazaa cuz he wanted to reminisce about what a great song holiday was. i really wouldnt fear. ive shared a few files on both kazaa and soulseek and there are 10s of millions of users on both networks which share more than i do. go for it. its extremely unlikely anything will result from it. however, if you really like the songs its recommended you buy the cds if you can. i downloaded the entire saetia discography before i bought saetia's retrospective cd. i respect level plane recordings and i appreciate that without support from their listeners, they would not be able to put out great tunes

[AlexHall74]

Good post WK,

As far as I know in the U.S. the RIAA was after "uploaders" who were sharing 750 or more files via their "My Shared Folder". If you think about it, doesn't it keep you off the radar if you limit the contents of your shared folder to let's say 400 or 500 songs?

That's what I did at the end. I put my best tunes from all genres into my shared folder. I added a prefix of the genre it was from in all caps: TRANCE-ATB-9PM Til I come; 80s-Deveo-Whip It; that way when new stuff came into my shared folder I could easily sort therough my files and the new ones. This seemed to work pretty well and I never got any messages from other users bitching that I wasn't sharing my files.

Another thing, I have a hunch that the RIAA is going after people that are sharing music that is currently selling well in the market. If everyone who was going to buy the new Nelly (blech!) album did not because of Kazaa, then the RIAA gets pissed. But who is going to care if someone picks ups some tunes that are lower on the radar such as less mainstream music that never sold too well in the first place? Again, just a hypothesis of mine that is completely not researched in any way shape or form.

WATCH OUT BRITNEY SPEARS DOWNLOADERS!!! 8O

-AlexHall74

WinMX also works better than Kazaa sometimes as Kazaa has so much paid content listed on it now...

[Bjorktribe]

You don't walk into a music store and walk out with a CD w/out paying, right? So you shouldn't be downloading it.

It still falls in the hands of whoever is distributing it though. Someone shelling out copies of their shared folder is just as guilty as that guy who is always outside of the concert hall selling bootleg tapes.

And besides (still) being overpriced, who doesn't like unwrapping their new CD and enjoying all the goodies inside? Or even being able to say 'I own this'?

Also, it's hurting the recording industries growth. If people wouldn't download Tens of thousands of dollars a day, Maybe, just maybe the record industry would say 'OK, We can afford not to charge people ten times the manufacturing cost for these disks.'

Oh well. You cant shut down the real profiters (Kazaa and others). They simply provide the transportation.

[AlexHall74]

Bjorktribe wrote:
Also, it's hurting the recording industries growth. If people wouldn't download Tens of thousands of dollars a day, Maybe, just maybe the record industry would say 'OK, We can afford not to charge people ten times the manufacturing cost for these disks.'

NOT!

The recording industry promised to lower the prices of CDs from their astronomically high entry price in the 80s once they made back their research and development money.

That never happened!

Also the DVD market is just as responsible (if not more) for the declines in record sales as DVD sales are up, up, up and that means the people buying those DVDs are buying less CDs.

When CD sales first were recorded people were buying what they had on vinyl and cassette over again so they had it in the new medium + new records that were coming out.

Well after about 5-10 years everyone had caught up with re-buying their old tunes and were concentrating on the new stuff (and hence an immediate gradual decline in CD sales).

Conveniently enough the RIAA blamed this ALL on Napster AND NOT AT ALL on the information above.

I agree though that stealing is stealing. There's no way around that.

-AlexHall74

[Bjorktribe]

Oh.

What a greedy industry! I can't wait to be a part of it

Just the recording side of it though. I'm not that corporate.

[Timo]

I think sales of downloads (iTunes, etc.) surpassed CD sales recently in the UK.

[grs]

Originally Posted by Wandering Kid

...the person sending the song to you is breaching copyright. therefore, you have no fear from the law as long as you dont upload. however. not uploading anything is against the spirit of file sharing and if you do this you will find yourself remote banned with alot of users who refuse to share files with you.

I've never shared and never been banned.
The Net is the new Radio. I turn on the radio and can't find a single station of interest. The future portable audio devices will be hooked up to your wireless Net account and you just upload your favorite Net streams.

[Merlot]

DS,
Where you plaing devils advocate in this thread or what?

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

Originally Posted by Merlot

DS,
Where you plaing devils advocate in this thread or what?

To be honest guys......listening to MP3's isnt that great. The sound quality is poor (128-192kbps) and if I like the song enough I will buy the album....so that i can obtain the best sound quality possible on a hi-end hifi. Ive discovered so much variety of music in the last month......im now looking to buy albums by:

Lichtenfels, Nature One Inc, The Love Committie, Lasgo, John Foxx, POD, Crystal Method, Infected Mushroom, The Cure, Placebo.

Now that ive discovered these bands......I want to buy their albums. Without Kazaa.....Im not sure if I would have ever discovered these.

I personally limit the amount of downloading I do.......and I have to stress.....a 192Kbps song doesnt exactly replace a proper CD/Record version.

DS