Legal vs. Illegal Downloads in Universities

Since some social media sites, like You Tube and My Space, stream music and video to its members, file sharing or illegal downloads have decreased from 22% in December 2007 to 17% in January 2009. People are buying more at least in the United Kingdom. These figures are from a survey in the UK.

File sharing seems to be going strong in America. In a June 19th, 2009 case, 24 songs "shared" with friendss added up to $1.92 million penalty- $80,000 for each song.

Is file sharing or illegal downloads worth it? I don't think so. I think it is far better and safer to pay for the songs either from Amazon or from your local music store. You can play your purchased copies for as long as you want just for yourself. This is wonderful because you are not paying extras in fines and serving prison time.

When Michael JacksonMichael Jackson died, the Internet could not take the pressures of the world trying to listen to his music through social media sites. Twitter actually went down. This was through legal methods but when the Internet goes down you will always have the alternative-an old record (LP) or CD and listen to the "king of pop".

So the social media sites are wonderful under normal conditions to view and listen to songs and videos legally but when the Internet encounters unusual behavior from the world, you can also use your purchased music on tape, record, or CD to "dance the night a way".