Originally Posted by zaphodiv
Downloading music is not illegal. Downloading copyrighted music without permission from the copyright holder is a civil matter not a criminal matter(may vary between countrys). That is why a few people are being sued rarther than prosecuted.
If you want to argue in favour of downloading of copyrighted music without the copyright holders permission then you need to argue that copyright is not a overall benifit to society.
You can't allow unrestricted copying of music in digital form without allowing all digital copying. If downloading of any music is allowed then people would make audio books of copyrighted books with some background music or turn a windows longhorn iso image into a .wav file and call the resulting screeching hissing noise music.
You can argue that economics will result in free software taking over eventually so there is no point having copyright on it. You can argue that society as a whole benifits from people reading and gaining knowledge so copying books should be allowed.
You can argue that music is culture and thats important so it should not be restricted.
I sure you could find lots of essays aruging for extreme socialism (nationalise the music industry!) or communism (intellectual property is theft!) to crib.
It would be more plausable to argue for encourging the public to download music that the creator has desided to give away and encourgae musicians to make free music. There is lots of free music on the internet being distributed
with the permission of the musician and some music that is old enough to be out of copyright. If radio stations started airing shows that just play freely downloadable music then it would encourage the public to download free music instead of heavily promoted pop.
