Legal download when artist agrees with downloading?
July 1, 2008 – 17:13A few days ago a Dutch judge ruled that downloading a copy from an illegal source (ie. most downloading) is illegal as well. This seems fair enough, although most (all?) lawyers are not convinced that the ruling is justly banning illegal downloads. I think none of us would really care if it’s illegal or not, it would matter only if we’re likely to get caught. Enter NVPI, the Dutch RIAA, who are claiming a big victory but say that they are probably not going to go on a sueing-spree.
Nothing seemed to have changed much, everybody agrees that downloading music you haven’t paid for is not very nice….unless artists like Joss Stone encourage it. So now Joss Stone says downloading her music is fine by her, is it legal? I think it’s less of a burden on our morality. If the artist says it’s okay, who am I to disagree? If artists like Nine Inch Nails are even uploading their music to bittorrent sites is downloading their songs legal or illegal? When authors like Paulo Coelho actively help you find free downloads of their books is downloading them something you can get fined or jailtime for?
What other artists are sharing their work or promote to share it freely like these artists? Maybe a list of those artists, with right next to the download button a button to buy a concerttickets is a good businessplan 
Or will the future only bring streaming music?
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One Response to “Legal download when artist agrees with downloading?”
By Alex
on Jul 2, 2008
In the Netherlands we don’t have one union, but there are several including MPA, Buma/Stemra, Videma and NVGD. The started a union of unions, called BREIN (BRAIN) that, deals with lawsuites and stuff. They just sad they agreed with this judge, usealy they are the ones saying to claim victory and NVPI make less extreme comments. They must want this very bad! They all forget other lawsuites that sad quite the opposite. And some of this did came before the higher courts.
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