New to Kazaa... and have concerns..Help!!!

[gamecock]

For several years now, freinds and co-workers and just about everyone I know has used Kazaa to download music from others shared folders. I'm not talking about new/original tunes. I am speaking of things like Top 40 songs. Its my understanding that this is not a legal practice. I see there are many, many people registered with 100's of thousands of songs and many that I would like to have.

What are the dangers of my downloading these songs? Will the Fed's show at my door? Is the problem too large to control? Do I use it in moderation or not at all?

Please advise!!!!

[Mike]

Just make sure you're not sharing any files... The RIAA apparently has been picking off people that are sharing lots of songs.
Then again I heard on TechTV (or somewhere on the net) that the chances of getting sued are 1 out of 15,000 or so.

Or check out this PROGRAM

[The_Saint]

yeah, don`t be worried because the chance you being cought are way remote.
Plus PeerGuardian (the program that Mike suggested) works really well.

[Mike]

So it does work though? I saw LAF recommend it but didn't get around to it yet.

[BettaBuy]

Any news on those lawsuits they were going to file ?

[The_Saint]

Originally posted by Mike
So it does work though? I saw LAF recommend it but didn't get around to it yet.

yeah...erm....well you know...it does work, or so I`ve heard

[gamecock]

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_...E15319,00.html

[DutchMaster]

If you are a US resident you should watch out downloading and sharing copyrighted songs. Especially since this week. Because RIAA has started a large campaign against private users that share copyrighted material.
RIAA is allowed to scan your harddisk through the internet and wont hesitate to give high fines ($150,000 per song)

http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/062503.asp

Ofcourse you can prevent them on scanning you harddisk. And its hard to stop a few million users.
But according to figures from Nielsen/NetRatings, the RIAA already succeeded in a decrease of 15% of the Kazaa-users.

[Lumeria]

I happen to be listening to an interview with the jazz singer Ruth Brown as I read this thread. She's one of those artists that got taken by her record company, and didn't see a penny from her early recordings. To my personal way of thinking, the ethical (though not legal) thing to do would be to download her recordings from kazaa, and then send what you would have spent on the recording to her directly.

It feels a lot different (to me) than depriving artists of their income by downloading files which you otherwise purchase, or not purchasing recordings which you've downloaded to test and then end up playing a lot. Too, many artists aren't raking it in - and if their sales are sufficiently poor, they have to devote some if not all of their time to making a living instead of making art.