The legal aspects of free P2P music downloads is often either ignored or misunderstood. The law is not obscure with regard to downloading music and movies using file sharing services, and nobody should be in doubt that downloading copyright-protected music or movies is illegal. However, there is some confusion over the term ‘copyright protected’. As if copyright was not confusing enough, there are now worldwide, and in the USA even inter-state, moves to increase the copyright period. That is, how long after the death of the originator should the copyright of music or intellectual works stand? Quite frankly, I am of the view that it should be a specific period of time after the copyright was claimed. Not only that, but copyright should awarded in the same way as a patent and that would resolve all confusion. By allowing a body, such as the Patents Office, to award copyright to an individual, that individual could then release their work to the population at large or keep it to himself and permit licenses for others to publish or use the work. Free P2P music downloads would then possibly be a thing of the past – or the future if the artists allowed that. Copyright should lapse at a certain time period after it has been awarded – say 50 years. So a piece of music copyrighted in 1960 could be anybody’s to use in 2010. That does not seem unreasonable – but it won’t happen! Why? Because of the moguls – the music and movie magnates that want it all for themselves to the extent that the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended to copyright period by 20 years! To find out if a work is still under copyright, you first have to find out who composed or wrote it, and then when they died. And then find out what the current law says you have to wait after that. Confusing or what? As for a movie – is it when the producer dies, the director, the writer – or the whole bunch of them? Who knows! In fact, copyright law is now in a right old mess, and very few who are not lawyers really understand it. Little wonder kids are illegally downloading music without knowing what they are doing! You can register with a P2P file sharing service that says it is a legal service. So you register, and then find you can download loads of music tracks and movies, many of them new, so do so believing it to be legal. The problem is that it is not the P2P software that is illegal but the free P2P music downloads that are being made illegally. Legal software can be used in a perfectly legal way, but downloading free P2P music downloads or bootleg movies is not legal because they are protected by the Copyright Act. And if you had downloaded public domain movies or music that were 50 years older than the date of death of the originator, these are also now illegal due to the 1998 act making it 70 years after! How confusing, and no wonder people have stopped bothering and now just download anything that comes their way. However, you shouldn’t do it. Still, the temptation is high because you can buy a lifetime registration that enables you to download any track that your friend has on their CD. Isn’t that just the same as taping or recording music from the radio? Why was there never a big outcry about that? I remember getting an old fashioned (now) reel-to-reel tape recorder for my 21st and the first thing I did was fill the 3 hour tape with chart hits from the radio. There was no outcry, no guys in suits knocking on my door at midnight. So what’s new with kids doing the same online? What’s new is people are selling it – mainly from the Far East, and it’s no longer allowable to target just them. It’s politically incorrect – at least that’s my view. To chase the Chinese video millionaires you must also chase the kids of Zook High in Kansas. Unbelievable or what! You may laugh, but for you there is a dilemma. You have easily acquired software that lets you break the law. How do you use it? The answer is you don’t – at least not illegally. Use it to download stuff that’s not copyright protected. How do you know? You don’t! If you register with a file sharing service that charges for a one year or even lifetime license to use it, it will likely tell you if a music or movie file is protected. You then get the choice – leave it or take a chance that you won’t get caught. The vast majority isn’t, and the movie guys don’t even seem to bother. They don’t have the intelligence to use the software to their advantage, but at least the music guys make an effort. Some tracks cannot be downloaded, so why isn’t the same system used on them all? Money likely! One tip for you: The sites that offer free movie downloads provide software to download the movies that is the same as that used for free P2P music downloads. So you can join and get movie and music downloads free – except for the membership charge that pays for the support and the accelerated download time that is 100% essential! However: do not use it to download copyright material if you can find what that is. That should be made easier, but the rule seems to be that if you have heard of the singer or the movie actors then it’s copyrighted! These guys should get more with it and make it easier instead of harder. So the answer and the final advice on free P2P music downloads? Don’t do it, but if you are tempted then find out about the legal aspects of it first.