Is using Kazaa for downloading music illegal?

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

Genuine question......

On the website it says court of appeal said it was legal. So where do I stand if im downloading some Classic Madonna 80's tracks off someone elses computer? Am I in trouble. I dont want to break the law.

DS

[Panopticon]

I could be totally wrong about this, so don't hold me to any of it, but I've been under the impression that it's fine to download music you already own, and not o.k. to d/l stuff you haven't paid for. So, if you have those Madonna tapes/CD's in your stash somewhere, I think it's legal to d/l a copy of what you already bought...

[jasedee]

It is all illegal....

It is unauthorised copying of someone elses property

It is even illegal to tape shows from the TV. So why did they make VCR's then????

It is illegal to even make a "backup" copy of your music CD's....Then why do they make CDR's then????

It is illegal to D/L MP3 so why the fuck all these new MP3 players on the market huh????

Fuck it......Im gonna hand myself in to the nearest cop shop, cos I guess I been breaking laws since I was a kiddy, taping my fave smurf shows

[AlexHall74]

The rules of CD duplication vary from country to country.

In Europe fair use of a CD includes amking a few copies for friends/ family.

In the U.S. it is not (big surprise).

The bottom line is that for now in the U.S. courts have said it is illegal for the RIAA to suppoena the names/addy's of IP addressholders booked ata certain time for downloading a few Madonna songs.

So the RIAA can get the IP; but the ISP does not have to give the RIAA any other information due to client confidentiality laws.

Someting like it.

I stopped downloading about a year ago.
If a $5,000 lawsuit hit me I'd be cooked.
My wife would have a shit fit!


-AlexHall74

[Timo]

It's legal to download music from Kazaa etc. in Canada, as CD-R duties/levvies go directly to the recording industry!

Not that I live there, though!

[blay]

the question is who is enforcing these laws and is it different for citizens of different countries?

and if so - that sucks.

[Merlot]

Originally Posted by AlexHall74

I stopped downloading about a year ago.
If a $5,000 lawsuit hit me I'd be cooked.
My wife would have a shit fit!
-AlexHall74

You ain't lyin!!!!! 8O

[AlexHall74]

The weird thing is, is that ilearned a hell of alot while I did download MP3s:

For instance, when I first got into elctronica I did not know many artist/song title names.

So I read the back of my CDs and serached for them on Napster/Kazaa.

BOOM!

CROSS-REFERENCING : A huge hitlist shows up of the songs you were looking for, as well as stuf that you didn't know was produced by the same artist, as well as some stuff they migh have collaborated with others on.

Then I searched ont he new artist names that I learned of on the initial search.

Also I found out about BBC's Essential Mix. I downloaded a few of them and was blown away by the cools sets that were being broadcast. I relentlessly searched the net for a place where I could buy the whole Esential Mix archive but to no avail. Then I found www.freshlymixed.com. They sell the entire 10 years (almost a few are missing) of Essential Mix, Kiss 100 Mixes, Breezeblock, and a few other odd series for $179 U.S. It came to me on 30 DVDS! I still have not even listend to half of them yet.

P2P networks were a great research tool; they just fucked a lot of artists out of the small amount of the royalties they would have received from their bigshot producers.

Now there is www.mercora.com.

Mercora functions just like Kazaa with one major difference. You can place whatever you like in your shared folder, you can search other's folders and they can search yours, but NO ONE CAN DOWNLOAD FROM EACH OTHER, you can only PLAY the tracks through the P2P like on demand radio.

This seems kind of cool as long as they don't fuck it up with ad-ware like Kazaa was.

Now I am ripping all my old CDs. Out of about 350 I have ripped 50 so I have a few more months to go.

Then I have to patch it all together.

Ultimately I want to put all of my P2P MP3s, my ripped Cds, and the EM archive onto a massive RAID5 array and save it for posterity + make it all available to me when I want to hear it instead of looking through a bunch of DVD-Rs I have had to make to archive all this shit.

Those were good days, but it is a time whose golden era has passed.

-AlexHall74

[blay]

meh. i just use it for porn.

[AlexHall74]

I conveniently left that part off...

I did get some pretty hilarious fake porn files though.

The titles were someting like: "Young Blonde geting banged hard by next door neighbor" and when I opened the file it showed this chick laying in bed half asleep under the covers, she farted, and then rolled over and went to sleep!

HAHHAHAAAAHAAAA!!!!

Way to go porn industry!