Music Reasearch Paper

We all know that using a computer to download music is easy and cheap but a lot of people take

advantage of it and it is very illegal and can cause u serious jail time. The internet makes it very easy to

share files even copyrighted music all across the world from country to country. In April 2003 the

RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)warned Grokster and Kazaa users that they could

face legal penalties for swapping files containing copyrighted music. The message read, in part: "It

appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. . . . When you break the

law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either

by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a ' file- sharing' system like this. When you offer

music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified." The RIAA identified

the IP addresses of the most active Kazaa supernodes, leading it to the ISPs of users who have stored

large numbers of copyrighted files on their computers. No matter how you think you might get out of it

the law will always catch you when it comes to downloading illegal music.

It has gotten so bad that schools have stepped in to help the problem. They have fast internet

connection and plenty of space on their drives for music so it make the perfect victim for downloading

illegal music. In 2003 the RIAA sued students at Michigan Technical University and Princeton

University for downloading and distributing copyrighted music files. Some universities offered student

a new way of getting the music they wanted. By using student fees to pay for music, it signed a deal

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giving its students access to the Napster 2.0 service. In 2003, had access to just about any song they

wanted with a click of a button. In the following years many other universities have signed similar

agreements with students so they wouldn't have to get prosecuted in court for breaking the law.

Music services, such as Napster and Rhapsody, are an alternative to illegal file- sharing. They