Is file sharing illegal? This is the question on the minds of many. With so many peer to peer (P2P) sources online, it gets very confusing. They all seem legal, yet one after the other they are being shot down. File sharing is not illegal if you own the rights to what you make available for others to download.
Usually somewhere on their site, these P2P’s address the question of legality. They will tell you that what you pay them for – if they do charge you a fee – is access to their network. They specify that it is still the responsibility of the user to make sure that the person from whom they are downloading a file has legal right to share the said song, album or movie. As we all know, the only way that that will happen is if the artist who recorded it or the recording company themselves put it up for free.
Since we all know that what people are looking for are the most popular, if not the latest music and videos, what do you think makes up the millions of content that flows through a P2P site? Would they indeed be legal? With the way the RIAA and various production houses have been reacting, not likely.
So how can these peer to peer sites claim that they are legal? They can do so because there is a portion on their site that says that they do not condone piracy and reminds you to obey the copyright law. It’s your look out from there on. They have warned you and now they wash their hands off you.
[tags] peer to peer, download, legal, file sharing [/tags]