A judge in Spain has ruled that downloading music for personal use is not illegal. This news makes the Spanish citizens happy but the Spanish recording industry is definitely contesting that ruling.
The recording industry (in various countries) has done its best to motivate people into stopping piracy. The RIAA has done everything in its power to put people who download or share music through file sharing sites behind bars. They don’t care if their target is young or old. They even sue dead people!
Ok, so they also sue the companies like Kazaa and Napster but these guys simply end up paying a fine and transforming themselves into legal download sites. Lucky rich people can just do that.
It sounds silly to a lot of people but it is a major thing for the artists and musicians. The recording industry (not the music industry) insists that they lose millions in revenue so they go after the average Joe who happened to like their song and was happy to find a free copy. How fortunate that the regular Juans will be free to download music still without repercussion – as long as it’s for individual/personal use.
The clock is ticking though on how long the good times will last so don’t plan to head on over to Spain just to download music and build your collection. The ruling may change at anytime, it is far better to find legal download sites than to later be sued because of a single song you got through a P2P site for free illegally.
Technorati Tags: download, music, Spain, RIAA, law, piracy
Categories: Downloading Legally, Music
“Yo ho ho! A pirate’s life’s for me” is a song that many kids don’t realize they are singing every time they download digital content online through these file sharing sites without the creator’s consent or acquire digital content without paying the creators for it. As far as they are concerned hey, it is FREE – free music, free movies, free games, free applications. What could be better?
The Boy Scouts have always been an organization that has tried to teach our children good moral values and respect. The Boy Scouts of Los Angeles are proactively moving to educate the children about the evils of downloading pirated digital content. There are 52,000 scouts in the Los Angeles area and the hope is that these 52,000 will stay away from piracy and spread the word.
The scouts are taught how to identify at least five types of copyrighted material. They are also taught at least three ways that these can be stolen. Hopefully the Boy Scouts can indeed help teach respect for the intellectual property of the creators and artists behind these works and slow down, if not eradicate the rampant illegal downloading.
What do the scouts get out of this? They are given an activity patch which shows a film reel, a music CD and the international copyright symbol. An activity patch is rather like a merit patch but isn’t required for promotion.
So it would seem that it is the Boy Scouts to the rescue of Hollywood. True to life heroes or will this just end up being a lot of talk? No one will know for sure ’til the numbers come in but every little bit will help. It will sure be great to keep the RIAA from suing more kids and teens.
Technorati Tags: download, legal download, Boy Scouts, Los Angeles, RIAA, Hollywood, Activity Patch
Categories: Downloading Legally
