When Is Music Sharing Illegal?

By James Witherspoon
Sharing music through the Internet has become enormously popular around the world, especially on college campuses. Online piracy of music is defined as uploading a copyrighted sound recording to the Internet for others to download or downloading the uploaded music from a website or file-sharing network. These actions are considered to be illegal even if the downloader or uploader doesn't resell the music file. Another form of music sharing on a website, streaming, is also considered to be illegal.

The laws traditionally associated with movie copyrights also apply to music. When music is illegally shared, distributed, reproduced, or rented, it falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI who can then investigate and prosecute those who break copyright laws. If you are found guilty of breaking copyright laws, you may be fined $250,000 or given 5 years of jail time for damages to the music industry.

There are other forms of material that fall under the copyright distribution laws. These include:

Software Written materials , Pictures , Sound recordings ,

The Recording Industry Association of America gives examples of different situations that are deemed illegal file sharing activities. These are:

* Someone sends you copyrighted music via email and you forward it on to your friends.
* You buy a CD, make MP3s out of the songs, and upload them available on a peer-to-peer network for others to download.
* You don't provide music on a file-sharing network but you download music from it.
* You pay to download or upload music on a peer-to-peer network, but the network is not an authorized distributor of music.