You can really get into trouble when you download songs.... WOW!

they let you download music because they want you to listen to the song, and then go to the store and buy the Cd or go on Itunes or whatever, and download the album or song. It is free advertising.
It was not just a few files that this woman downlaoded. She was downloading a whole lot and then she shared them. If she had just kept them for herself, the music companies would have thought "she is planning to buy some," even if she never did, but now they are thinking "she is illegally distributing music, and she is not a record company, or a cd company, and they have to be licensed." I know that sometimes the music companies give you a free sample of part of the music so you can try it out and buy it later, but often these free samples may be ten seconds of dead air before the actual song. I would say it is wrong to download music unless the artist says that "I love my fans so much that from such a such a date to such a such a date "Hotel California" will be available for free." or something like that, and I guess that is what happens.
The trouble is that many of the downloads contain viruses. or they are incomplete, are recorded from machines that do not work.
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It is stealing no matter what happens if you don't pay for your shopping in the supermarket you are done for shoplifting,but the food is available to steal if you get away with it.It is the same with music,artists take time and effort to make music get in on the airwaves make cd,ect you should pay them or no one will bother to make music,and what a sad life that would be.It was always illegal to copy with a cassette player and pass it on to their friends.The music industry loses millions every year from illegal downloads,I think you will find they are clamping down on these illegal sites and they are tracing illegal down loaders and fining them so be careful.

I read about that. She is suppose to pay $80,000 per song downloaded.

Well that´s incredible. So then I think there are millions people in jeopardy, because downloading is one of the main things people do in the internet.

It was also a case reported in 2007, one some guy used peer-to-peer network kazaa to download the files, despite housing roughly 1,702 songs in the folder, Thomas´s trial only focused on 24 of them, including tracks by Green Day, Janet Jackson, Godsmack and Richard Marx. Following yesterday´s ruling, Thomas will essentialy have to pay $80,000 for illegally downloading a Richard Marx Song. That is, if the RIAA chooses to collect the $1.92 million Thomas doesn´t have.

I downloaded music through these networks, but that was some time ago, never have a problem. Now I´m using servers as rapidshare, megaupload, etc, to avoid thing like these.

Actually, yes we all know downloading on limewire, etc. is illegal. It is like we are advocating piracy. But I feel sympathy for the woman who needed to pay millions. Almost everyone downloads from such websites. Does it mean that the government will apprehend the millions of users and charge them all millions in dollars? It is such an unfortunate event that the woman was unlucky enough to get caught and punished so severely.

wow...thats something...im using limewire for my songs..maybe if u distributed it you can get some trouble

That´s sad to hear, I used to download lots of things, and I have bought a lot of programs that way, applied the crack until it´s fully featured, and then I decided to buy some programs.

Hi DL...

You sure can get into heaps of trouble downloading music that you did not buy. I am actually guilty of this and have limewire installed in my pc. This is I know of. What I don't understand though is how can a court fine a woman that amount of money when they know full well that she doesn't have any means of doing so.

I would think that instead of giving such a huge punishment on these people, they should go after the major players in the industry especially the pirates. Those are the people that should be punished.

Oh well... I guess it just wasn't her day.

It is illegal when you sell what you downloaded because it is violating the copyright of the distributor.

She did it wrong and on the wrong place.
and be careful with limewire as some have something wrong with them I had to take mine off.