The Cost Of Music Downloading

I saw this news story in my inbox this morning, and honestly I’m not surprised to hear it happened. Yesterday the courts ordered a Minnesota woman to hand over $222,000 for downloading and sharing 24 songs. Yikes, now this woman is probably going to have to make payments for the rest of her life because of some greedy record company. And yeah, of course she WAS violating copyright but did you guys know it’s actually illegal to rip music from a CD and put it on your iPod? Here’s what I read:

That’s right, according to Sony, even if you legally purchase the music, you are not allowed to makes copies under any circumstance. That means, Sony considers transferring songs to iPods and Zunes “stealing.” They would prefer you re-buy the music for every format you want it in. So you buy it on CD, then re-buy it as an mp3 for your iPod, then re-buy it for your Zune, then re-buy it if you want to copy it for a friend, re-buy it to stick on a personal mixtape CD, and so on.

And that’s what I mean by greedy. Which is why I suggest music listeners….

1. Never, EVER pay for any type of music unless it’s an artist you like and want to support (which is only a handful for me).
2. Only download music, don’t share it via P2P programs, because that is what will get you caught.
3. Instead of using P2P programs, download from new music blogs and trade with friends.

Gotta stick it to the man.