The Great "Cheapest Legal Music Downloads" Hunt.

thebluedog

i do not know if it has been posted beforehand. i have tried Napster before ans was getting charged £10 per month to rent the songs . To burn the tracks to cd or download to portable device there was a additional charge working out 72 per track in addition tot eh £10per month. i have came across a site called mp3sugar.com . This excellent legal site charges 0.10 $ per track and even cheaper for album tracks this allows you to download the track onto your computer and portable device. This works out at less than 0.06 per track and even cheaper per album.

koru

bluenose1 wrote:

Yes, I also read it.
think it was in the November issue of the Which magazine. Based on their recommendation I have started using it

Thanks. Have now found the article, and I retract my earlier scepticism. The article says:

"Another interesting site is the Russian shop [it then names the website] - it's cheap and will sell you files as MP3s, with no restrictions on how you use them."

That's it: one sentence. Not much, but no reservations about illegality were expressed by Which?. Two sentences further on it added a comment about checking the legality of sites, but I don't think the way it is phrased it can be read as indicating any specific doubt about legality of that site that must not be named. (Perhaps we should call it https://www.voldemort.com?)

I have refrained from giving the URL, as Martin clearly asked us not to, but I wonder if perhaps he should now reconsider, given the approval implicit in that quote from Which?

Fran

koru wrote:

The article says:

"Another interesting site is the Russian shop [it then names the website] - it's cheap and will sell you files as MP3s, with no restrictions on how you use them."

That's it: one sentence. Not much, but no reservations about illegality were expressed by Which?. Two sentences further on it added a comment about checking the legality of sites,................................................................................ I wonder if perhaps he should now reconsider, given the approval implicit in that quote from Which?

What you have quoted doesn't endorse the website or say one way or another about whether it's legal... (presumably it tells the consumer to check legalities for themselves?).

koru

Fran wrote:

What you have quoted doesn't endorse the website or say one way or another about whether it's legal... (presumably it tells the consumer to check legalities for themselves?).

I think it is an implicit endorsement. The preceding sentence said that "Computing Which? recently recommended Panasonic Music Stream, iTunes and Napster as the best sites". If the next sentence mentions the Russian site, I think it is pretty clear that they are expressing some sort of approval.

If Which? had any doubt about the legality of the site, they would say so. They don't explicitly say anything about the legality of most things in their magazine (they don't explicitly tell us that iTunes is legal,... or Dyson vacuum cleaners or iPods or Ford Mondeos). But where they think there is doubt about legality, they write specific articles warning readers about this. So it is implicit that unless they say otherwise the products they recommend are legal.

They do indeed issue a general warning about checking legality, but I think that, in context, this can only sensibly be interpreted as meaning the hundred other sites that they don't specifically mention. It would be completely irresponsible for them to mention a site that they consider to be subject to any significant legal doubts.

I am not saying that this conclusively proves the Russian site is legal for UK users, but it gives a pretty good indication that the legal doubts are not strong. I can't see how MSE could get into trouble for links to the Russian site if an organisation as pernickity as Which? has no reservations (which is obviously the case, because if it had reservations it would have expressed them or would at least not have gone out of its way to highlight the Russian site in its article).

rattla

IMO



I think you are making a lot of assumptions in your interpretation, and the statement seems to be a comment rather than verifying the legality or endorsing the site.

While I agree that you would expect them to mention it if they had any doubts, I don’t think this can be used as any sort of legal approval for the site, especially considering they mention later on about checking the legality of the sites yourself.

rdwarr

So if I want to check if a Russian site is legal, whom do I ask?

snezhinskproject

rdwarr wrote:

So if I want to check if a Russian site is legal, whom do I ask?

A judge. Seriously.

chrb

There's an interesting article on BBC news from the producer of Newsnight - quote "File sharing is not theft."

chrisw2k6

Quote from Tech Law Advisor society or something like that regarding the 'Russian Site'

"Additionally, assuming they have legitimate licenses to distribute the music, they probably are restricted to a certain geographic are via their distribution license. The end user wouldn't be violating any laws but the distributor would. If they don't have legitimate distribution licenses then they obviously have no right to distribute at any price. If they claim to have the licenses the end user might be seen as an innocent infringer if not on notice. "

also, in Laymans terms

"Downloading from *Russian Site* is legal for U.S. Citizens, as long as the files are for private use and not for distribution."

No mention of UK, as it was an American site

The legality of russian site.com is also confirmed by countless other sites.

My advise, use it, but keep searching for potential news over its legality unfolding, and whenever you get edgy, dont use it. Simple as. Oh and surely talking about it and using its real name cant be anyway wrong can it?
-

alikat_3

I just love this website, http://www.archive.org/ which I must warn you, it is addictive. If like me you love folk, country & blues their are some real gems such as old 78 tracks which you can download in MP3 format, their is far more than music on this website, but as yet I have only looked at the audio files.

From the FAQ page;What is the Live Music Archive all about?

This audio archive is an online public library of live recordings available for royalty-free, no-cost public downloads. We only host material by trade-friendly artists: those who like the idea of noncommercial distribution of some or all of their live material. Live recordings are a part of our culture and might be lost in 100 years if they're not archived. We think music matters and want to preserve it for future generations.

The LMA draws strength from the members of etree.org and other online communities of music fans devoted to providing public access to high-quality digital recordings of tradable performances. Typically, recordings are made by the fans themselves. Recordings are preserved in "Lossless" archival compression formats such as Shorten or FLAC (MP3 is not Lossless) for highest quality preservation.

Patrons may download from the LMA with the understanding that the artists still hold their copyrights. All material is strictly noncommercial, both for access here and for any further distribution.