Let's pretend for a
moment you are a song writer. You
have just written a brilliant
song you are ecstatic about.
After years of struggling as an
artist and musician, you believe
this song may be your ticket to a
viable career. You work
incredibly hard to record the
song and you are even more
excited when it becomes a hit.
Life couldn't be better.
Meanwhile, a fan
hears the song and buys your CD.
The fan takes your CD home and
creates an mp3 download of your hit song.
From there, he puts it in the
file sharing folder on his
computer for all the world to
download. As mentioned in "What is File Sharing", the person
downloading the file for the
first time never pays for the
mp3. The only person who pays for
the song is the very first person
who bought the CD and creates the
first mp3 to be shared
In fact, given the
fact that file sharers don't like
to pay for the music downloads they enjoy, the
original song was probably copied
from a noble friend's CD who
never intended for it to be
shared with millions of other mp3
downloaders without one
cent going to the artist.
The only other
question that remains is this.
How would you feel if you were
that artist? Now, some argue that
popular artists are still making
millions of dollars so what's the
big deal? Well, assuming that
logic was ethically correct, the
next time I'm in a Wal-Mart I'm
going to steal a couple of CD's
because they are "already
making millions of dollars".
It comes down to one
basic question everyone must
answer for themselves. Will you
download with integrity and pay
for your music? If the answer is
yes, there are legal music
sites available that don't
use file sharing networks.
Click here to learn
how legal mp3
download sites are
different.
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