I've known for sometime that it's illegal to download music from P2P programs like bearshare or limewire. I was thinking about it and I determined that those who download the music shoul not be punished and that it should be the distributer.

Is this how it should be?

It is not illegal to download music over here. Complain to your local legislative body if you like

Let me put it this way;

You spend a large amount of time to create and write a song, you record it, and you are the sole owner of the song. You have no other job, and depend on the royalties for money. You used to make a lot of money from songwriting and singing and all of a sudded, your income is cut in half. You'd be pretty angry too. Just like if you made an OS and it got ripped, or you made a game and it got ripped. Especially with games and OS's, which take a lot of money to make.

Now you decide

Let's put it this way.. Do you write songs because you are an artist and you would die if you could not create or do you write songs to make money out of nothing?

You know, musicians did survive in the times before copyright law. Actually, the greatest musical masterpieces of all time were written when copying sheet music was a non-issue.

Okay so It's only illegal to distrubute it?

So now you can only afford a ferrari and not a lambo too?

That would be a shame.

Hehe good one twite.

Nodsu lives in Estonia. He's not bound by US laws.

I do think, however, that music shouldn't be pirated. It is unfair for people to have to work and pay to make it and for others to get it for free.

It seems that LimeWire should be punished for not trying to stop music piracy.

I'm sure you would be upset if you income was cut in half .

Buying induvidual songs and albums is the way to do it. It is unfair to the musicians to rip and illegally distribute their music. Independent artists especially ... it's hard enough for them to make money.

Just purchase the song's you like online ... The quality is better than most ripped songs out there these days anyway. I hate putting together a playlist and having some songs louder or softer than others

Prices for CDs are too high and the artist sees too little of that money, at least that is my belief on why music piracy is so widespread. I'm not sure I know anyone that pirates music that does it just because they can. They do it because they want something that they can't justify spending $15 or more for. iTunes sells stuff cheaper but it is like a more expensive (often lower quality) and is more restrictive than what you can ******.

But to answer the question, yes I think it probably should be illegal. But that is a question with a lot more backstory that must be included and thought about when answering.

Obviously post count doesn't accurately depict wisdom

You truely don't understand what being a true musician is.

A true musician makes music because he loves music, and creating music. Music is what painting is to a painter. It's expression. That is the way a musician expresses themselves. When you talk do you want people to listen to you? Ill take the obvious answer. Its true that when you create music you put all your effort into it, but you want to be rewarded by it also. And people enjoying it is just enough. To make enough money off of record sales alone to live comfortably you MUST sell a million records. Record lables give you a very small portion from the price of the record, lets say 15 cents(Very good) but maybe for the whole band on an average of 25 cents a record. You must firther split it however many ways depending on how many people are in your band. SO lets say you make a record with 4 people in your band(counting you). You sell a million copies, thats platnium, extremely hard to achieve. Your record company gives your band 25 cents a record( extremely realistic to a big lable). that ammounts to around 250,000. Now split that 4 ways, 62,500. Now tax that, pay your producer also(if that was in the deal) buy musical equiptment for live play. ill say that will leave you with around 40,000...

doubleposting so i can finish what i have to say...

Now sense record sales don't pay you any more then an average office job how do rock stars live in mansions?

Live performances and merchandise...

I think It should be perfectly legal to download any song from any band, because all a musician wants is to be heard and if extremely lucky possibably be able to live off their music. If told anything else that source is a sell out.

I would say to download all your favorite artists albums. Then support them in their live show by buying a t-shirt and concert ticket with out complaint of the high prices.

Even if you downloaded every one of their albums you probably still will be giving them more money by just buying the t-shirt at a concert then buying everyy single one of their records in a corporate music store.

And if you buy cd's make sure its at a local record store not best buy/walmart/etc..

Well stated.

i think its fine to download there music as long as you go to the conscert and support them there.

i think it is ok to download music but not for free or just listen it on the internet for free, without being able to download. in this way, we show some respect to the person who worked for making that song starting from composing to recording it on CDs. That means time and money, and we should return that, to encourage that person to compose more.
But it will take a long time until all the world will do that. It will start with USA and Western Europe, but it's a difficult process to expand this project to all the countries. And I tell you why. Here, in Romania(where I live), people are not very rich, and they just can pay their bills, food and medicines. It's almost impossible to spend a lot of money on OCs, movies, music, programs so piratery is very advanced in this area. We can download illegal everything we want without any obstacles. Also hacking is high. All the Eastern Europe is the same. So first, people need to have a better life and after that, piratery swill slow down. Maybe you get my point.

Artists are entitled to just compensation for their work. Illegal downloading is stealing.

Well said, Tedster.

Don't know how it's stealing. I never "took" it away from anybody.

It Actually is stealing.

But believe it or not...This thread is titled

Should it be illegal to download music?

Thanks for stating the obvious.

Piracy deprives the artists of the money that it took to create the music. Whether or not they need that money is not part of the issue; it is still stealing from them. If you're going to download their music, pay the price.