Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Yes 100% illegal with RIAA settlements starting at $5K if you don't want to go to court.
I would heartily disagree that P2P sharing is 100% illegal. There's defintiely a gray area there, and by no means an easy case for RIAA to prosecute. If it was, you would not see any sites like Limewire stay around for more than a few months.
In fact, to my knowledge, the RIAA has yet to actually ever recive a guilty verdict against someone they filed suit against. Yes they have won plenty of law suits (mainly beacuse nearly everyone settles), but no one has ever been found guilty of an actual crime. In fact, I am convinced that the RIAA specifically targets people who they know will not be able to afford proper counsel to defend themselves.
Whether or not you belive file sharing is morally okay or not is up to each individual person. It's the same with allofmp3.com. Some people just feel better that they actually paid money for the music they downloaded, despite the fact that the artists or production companies that made the music will never see any of this money. To me this is actually criminal because someone is making a profit off of music that is not theirs. It is my opinion that d/l'ing from a P2P network is more "right" than buying songs from allofmp3.com. Are they both wrong; well.... that is up to you to decide.