YOMAG - Music - Downloading from the Internet

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Downloading from the Internet

Bolzano 21. 05. 2009

Everything about enjoying music: download it for free or buy the CD?

There are two ways of downloading music, films, files, books, etc. from the internet: a legal way and an illegal way.
Nowadays it is very frequent to download illegally from some sites, that post every new song, film and whatever can be downloaded, for free and very quickly. Let’s take the example of music and see the differences between downloading it legally and illegally: in terms of time it is the same because in both cases the songs are available at the moment, but on the legal sites, like for example iTunes, the new songs arrive late and you have to wait until the site buys the music and puts it on the internet; instead on the illegal sites, new songs that, for example came out in the USA and not in Italy, are right there the day after because someone in the States posted it on the internet, and everyone can download them. Apart from the lapse of time, another difference is price: legal sites cost (iTunes costs 0,99 €cent per song), instead illegal sites are totally free. If we think that a CD costs about 20 € and has 30 songs on it, if we buy it on legal sites we spend more than going to a shop (29.70 €), if we download it from illegal sites, we don’t spend anything. We should also say that legal sites have their own copyrights and you can’t do anything with that music, for example burn CDs: instead illegal sites don’t have any copyrights and you can burn as many CDs as you want and also sell them. This is the reason why they are called illegal sites: because it’s ok until you use them for personal use, but it’s not ok if you start selling CDs that you burnt, or compilations that you did!
So I think that the decision of being “legal” or “illegal” depends on morality and on what someone thinks is right or not and what is best to do. I have to say that I download illegally from sites like eMule, Limewire, Morpheus, …but I don’t make a profit out of it and I don’t sell what I download. I know that downloading for free not just music, but also films, computer games, books and other, lowers the sales of CD and DVD shops and also of some bookshops, but I find it more convenient for me now to download without paying and to have also something that in Italy hasn’t arrived yet, but came out just in other States.
There are increasingly more people that pass from legal to illegal sites because they find it more convenient or some people who start downloading for free, instead there are less people who join legal sites. The statistics are very clear and if the governments don’t change this situation I think that most people will join illegal sites with all the negative consequences for shops and for legal sites that will lose their customers.