Even whole governments have capitulated into the strict control of music and music videos allowing the sharing and ripping of audio tracks into the more common digital format that is easily shared all over the internet. Do a quick search on the net for free music and video downloads and you get thousands if not millions of them which you can choose from and get your music tracks. Add to that the variety and diversity of P2P sites which offer songs straight from site member’s computer hard drives and it makes for a highly uncontrollable trade of the said stuff.
The European Union has given into and abolished the highly unenforced law which prohibits the conversion of Audio tracks into the many digital formats now in use on many consumer electronics products. This law has been in effect for quite sometime but with no one willing to police and control the said action has proven to be quite a waste of time and proves to be feasible only on paper. Many have been doing so and these file sharing systems way back from the Napster incidents and the Gozilla downloads which were some of the first ones to offer file sharing on a worldwide scale allowing files to be downloaded from the nearest most probable source. P2P has never lost ground and expanded under the cover of the more legal circles of controlled music only stepping out onto the headlines when music labels found that music was still being shared on the net and it had to be happening under their noses.
Sites like the Pirate Bay have long been under the eye of the law and when they finally decided to shut it down, it was up in a matter of hours with mobile workstations serving as servers randomly distributed all over Europe. With three of the four major record labels now distributing music in the more compact digital format on the web these governments have also followed suit but the various sites do pass on the control to the users themselves relieving them of the legalities and penalties of piracy. We will surely be continuing to hear from these many legal and illegal sharing sites that promote and allow sharing of copyrighted music all over the net in the coming years till the time comes that it can no longer be policed and thus allowed to go on unrestricted for all to enjoy.