I download music.....And quite frankly I do it because most modern music is complete crap.

I have all the older stuff that was actually decent on CD, or I have actually paid for it and downloaded it legally.

But most albums these days are 10 songs of complete filler and garbage and 1 or 2 decent songs. I dont care what genre of music you are talking about, it is all garbage for the most part.

So yeah ill illegally download the 1 or 2 decent songs.

I have a system though...If an album has 4 songs that I really like I will go out and buy the album or download it legally. Honestly with modern music that doesn't really happen very often.

Also....I listen to alot of underground/ non mainstream type of music that quite honestly is hard to find. So if someone recommends an artist to me I check them out by downloading their stuff. If its really good ill find a way to buy it.

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"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments"

--George Washington

"Never spend your money before you have earned it."

--Thomas Jefferson

"One man with courage is a majority."

--Thomas Jefferson

Alright, the answer to your question is simple. Downloading music IS a crime. That's is not the true question however. The real question is whether downloading music should be a crime or if it is "wrong."

My personal belief is that downloading music is not "wrong." Why? Well, why not download music? You are simply organizing bits on YOUR hard drive, in a fashion YOU want. I think the "intellectual property" crap is BS. The main reason for private property laws is to prevent two individuals from using the same resource. However, this "intellectual property" can be used by many individuals simultaneously. Hence, intellectual property isn't really property. The property is the ACTUAL hard drive/CD. The order of bytes on your computer which matches that should NOT be considered property, because YOU bought the disk, and organized it how YOU wished. Yes, it is against the law. But is it "wrong"?

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The woman in my avatar is Cristina Scabbia and the woman in my profile picture is Tarja Turunen
Sun flames and moons glow, timeless the tides will flow, what will I face, what will be mine, fortune and fate the other side...

I'm a Tarte! What! You Want Somma This?

The problem is, I live in Australia and I despise mainstream music. So, downloading is the only way I can access good music.

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The woman in my avatar is Cristina Scabbia and the woman in my profile picture is Tarja Turunen
Sun flames and moons glow, timeless the tides will flow, what will I face, what will be mine, fortune and fate the other side...

I'm a Tarte! What! You Want Somma This?

There's good and bad.
I've always believed in tape-trading and I do burn cds from friends. I used to use Napster to preview bands before buying albums and for getting rare cuts. The way I look at it, this actually leads to music spreading around faster which ultimately boosts profits for artists and even the record companies. That's how underground metal has traditionally prospered. Metallica is hypocritical.
But I guess I can see their point when it comes to just downloading instead of buying- especially if it's complete free-riding without offering trade.
But the enforcement when it happens is pretty heavy-handed... and I think the large amount of downloading does point to the overprice or lack of quality in the music industry.

What I see as positive is that downloading is helping smaller companies. Now artists are able to bypass the record companies and their contracts and go directly to the fans... sometimes developing schemes to accept only the payment the buyer wishes to pay.
I know Stephen King had trouble with that model when he attempted an on-line book years ago, but today musicians are actually making it work (maybe King should try again).
This is a victory over big media industry.
And the small bands profit even from free downloading. For them, concerts and merchandise are bigger than album sales. Branding trumps cd sales.

So I think we may actually see an end to the industry as is and possibly an end to formula superstar music and art... a return to more personalized, localized (though global), niched art... or at least an end to record companies being the primary beneficiaries of music.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

The music industry brought this on themselves. Number one, they want to control what music is available for us to hear on the radio and MTV. Secondly, everything costs so much that when P2P technology emerged, people began sharing these extensive libraries of music (a lot of which is not available except via buying the CD).

The majority of P2P libraries available are not malicious...it is part of the American culture. We are rebels. We are bootleggers. We often tell authority to F itself. The rich want to punish downloaders and the downloading community has stood it's ground.

I think it speaks for itself.

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Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
(To such heights of evil are men driven by religion)

My personal opinion is that the record corporations need to stop complaining about people illegally downloading music when they don't offer a viable legal alternative.

If I buy a song from itunes, that song will only work on my ipod and computer. If I buy a CD I can rip the songs put them on a plethora of portable devices I have, play them on multiple computers, bring them to school computers, use them in projects and videos, and just about anything else I could think of. If I download a song illegally I get the benefit of freedom in how I use the music and I get the convenience of using the internet.

Now if Record Companies were smart they would offer super-high quality songs free of DRM for reasonable prices, then I could understand their legit frustration with illegal downloading.

A bigger problem is all of the people downloading software and computer games illegally. If that catches on, companies are going to stop making the programs and games we love and cherish.

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Woodrow Wilson

I like owning CDs, but they're seriously overpriced, and I can only ever find mainstream crap (The Game, Justin Timberlake etc.).

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I have an ipod that I won just by checking out at Safeway (wouldn't have bought one, probably) and I've been able to fill it with quite a bit of legally downloaded free material. If you surf music label websites and bands' websites, there are plenty of complete songs offered by the artists and labels. So for me the ipod is a way to discover new and obscure music that I probably wouldn't hear otherwise, and most of it is pretty good. In fact, that's how I doscovered Nightwish - a free download of End Of All Hope from a label's site.