There are a lot of laws regarding the downloading of music off of the Internet. Illegal downloading of music is a criminal act, because copyright law protects creative works. When you illegally download music off the Internet, you are 100 percent stealing and therefore breaking the law. There are completely legitimate ways to download music off the Internet, and those ways are by paying. If you pay for music using programs like iTunes or Rhapsody, you are not breaking the law.
Law Violations
There are a lot of ways for someone to break the law regarding downloading music. Some of these ways include joining file-sharing networks and downloading unauthorized MP3s of copyrighted music, transferring over copyrighted music with the assistance of a messaging service, sending copyrighted songs via email to your friends, making an MP3 copy of a song and placing it onto the Internet for everyone to download, burning copies of CDs and giving them to your friends, and much more.
Copying Music
If you make unauthorized copies of music for people to download illegally, you are both stealing and breaking the law. People who are found guilty of copying music illegally could be held liable to pay thousands and thousands of dollars in damages. If you are caught doing this, you could potentially be sued in civil court.
Court Rulings
Various court rulings have established that it is entirely against the law to both upload and download copyrighted music without having permission. Not only does this rule apply to sound recordings like music, but it also applies to written text, pictures and software.
Penalties
There are criminal penalties for first-time offenders who illegally download or copy music. These penalties could be as high as being sentenced to five years in prison and having to pay an astounding $250,000 in fines. Also, civil penalties could entail having to pay legal fees and damages which could run in the thousands. Keep in mind that $750 per track is the lowest possible penalty.
Prevention/Solution
Whether they are web or FTP sites, it is also against the law to download unauthorized music from pirate pages. These are peer-to-peer systems for downloading and transferring music, and some examples of these include LimeWire, Kazaa, Bearshare, Morpheus, Nutella and Aimster--though there are many others in existence.
