Music Download Sites – What Makes a Website Legal or Illegal?

The introduction of music download sites on the Internet has revolutionized the way we consume music. Although it is easier and much cheaper for consumers to get the latest music from their home’s comfort, the breakthrough began with an illegal method of downloading music, which unfortunately opened the door for others who still are today. It is up to the consumer to be taught about which websites and services are legal to use and which are not. To better understand the legality of music download sites, it is best to take a look at the first popular illegal online .

The beginning of illegal music tubidy download .

In 1999, the world was introduced to the first software sharing software called Napster. Created by Shawn Fanning, the technology allowed users to freely share their music files with other users. This would bypass the entire legal music market and allow anyone who could operate a computer and simple software to get the music they wanted for free. The software was quickly noted as a violation of copyright law as it never had permission from the artists or their labels to distribute these files.

Metallica, a heavy metal act, discovered that one of their demo songs “I Disappear” circulated and even played on certain radio stations before the track was ever released. They were the first to sue Napster for copyright infringement. A month later Dr. Also litigate a lawsuit that asked Napster to remove all of its content from the service. These actions, along with many record labels, pursued Napster in court for the massive copyright infringement.

The media began on the story and indirectly made the service even more popular, focusing on sharing music files and increasing the number of active users to over 26 million in Napster’s final stages.

On June 3, 2002, Napster filed for bankruptcy, but the damage was done. The world was introduced to file sharing and online music consumption. Many imitation sites and software appeared after this incident and to this day you can still find illegal peer-to-peer file sharing solutions offering illegal music downloads.

So what makes a music download site legal or illegal?

There are very basic principles that a music download site must follow in order to provide legal downloads for music. In short, they need permission to distribute every music file on the site from the copyright owner or legally representing the music. This can be either the artist, the artist publishing company and / or in most cases the artist’s record label.

In our first example, Napster took copyrighted material and decided without permission to make these files freely available. Neither the artist nor the record companies were compensated. This is where the big problem lies. Music is like any other product on the market. A person or team of people makes the time to create a song or album and sell their product. If you want the product, you have to pay a legal distributor of this product so that everyone involved in creating it gets compensation for their work. If they are not, and do not agree to make it available for free, you steal their product.

With music, infringing songs is a violation of copyright laws that are in place to protect artists and labels, and make sure they have control over who can distribute their art while receiving compensation when someone buys a copy of a song or album.