The Difference Between Legal And Illegal MP3 Downloads

In this day and age uploading music is easier than it has ever been. You can share your favorite media files to anyone in seconds with just a few clicks. This causes a problem when you?re looking for legal MP3s as you may run into MP3s that have just been shared. Remember that any media that is being shared amongst users without the permission of the record company or copyright company is illegal. It?s important to find sites that you can trust to get legal music from.

There are so many people sharing MP3s that record companies have a hard time tracking down everyone. However there are some cases where people have been caught and fined heavily. To avoid this you will need to find a legitimate site to download music from. There are some obvious signs that a site is not legitimate.

The first and most obvious sign of illegal sharing is when you can download as much as you want for free. In most cases these sites are user sharing sites that will allow you to download illegally as much as you want. Some websites will have a small amount of music that is not copyrighted however for most sites this is not the case. Since it?s illegal for sites to host and upload copyright material they just let users share it so that they can?t be held liable. You have to be cautious of these sites because there are so many of them and some even to claim to be legitimate when they clearly are not. If users are allowed to share files freely between each other you should be cautious about it?s legitimacy.

Secondly if you see a site that claims you can download unlimited music for one low price you will want to proceed cautiously. Most of these sites are illegal sites that charge you to download from them. This means that the full amount of your money goes to them while none of it goes to the copyright company. Not only are you downloading music illegally but you?re paying to do so. There are one or two sites that will allow you to do this that are legal however as soon as you stop your subscription your files will no longer work and thus you really don?t own the music you are just paying to listen to your favorite music anytime.

There are two easy ways to know if you are paying for legal downloads. The first is that you decide to choose a site that is well known and has a good reputation backing it. Thus you will have nothing to worry about. Most of these sites will charge you per song or per album. This gives you the flexibility of buying either a whole album or just a song. The second way that you can know if you?re paying for a site that?s legal is to do a little research and find out which sites record companies endorse. A few searches on a search engine will give you a list from the record company about which sites you can trust.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 8:40 am and is filed under iPods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.