What makes downloading music illegal?
Most of the time, when you download music, you are violating the copyright laws. Music, just like books, videos, and most magazines, are protected by US copyright laws that say that it is illegal to copy and distribute the material without permission from the artist or writer who produced the material. This was done to allow the creative artist to continue to profit from their product after it is available to the public. Some artists will make their music available for free download, but typically, these are less popular artists that are trying to build an audience. They are using the free downloads as a marketing tactic to get more people to listen to their music so that they can sell more tunes with their next release. It might not be apparent, but popular musicians make much more money from the sales of CD/MP3s than they do from public appearances or concerts. When you download pirated copies of music, you are cheating the artist out of their (small) share of profits to help pay for
