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.
[tags] download, music,Spain,RIAA,law,piracy [/tags]