Welcome once again to PCTips3000! I don’t know about you, but I’ve been wondering for a long time about file sharing downloads and their legal status, especially when talking about things that have a somewhat cloudy legal status, like bootlegs. As far as I know, it was often illegal to sell, but legal to buy them, at least some years ago, but I’ll leave the bootlegs issue for later, now.
Before moving on, let me put this clear – you should NEVER pay for downloads, as long as you think you’re making a big deal. Why am I saying this? Big deals can be found on eBay, where you can grab some original audio CD or video DVD for 5 bucks, but when we’re talking about new releases that come for $20 or more… paying $1 or $2 for a download will only give you some pirated content for a few bucks, and nothing more!
No need to go through the history of file sharing once again, so I will tell you a few things about that bootlegs issue I mentioned earlier. More than just bootlegs, it’s about the legal or not issue all over the world.
We’re not all lawyers, that’s a truth nobody can deny, but as long as I missed a show, somebody recorded it and made it available online for free, downloading it shouldn’t be illegal. On the other hand, if the live material was recorded by the band/artist to be released on an official recording, chances for you to step into illegal land by downloading the bootleg are growing exponentially.
If you really care about the artists you like, you should buy the original recordings and go to concerts when possible, and if you’re really a fan, you should also do your best to collect bootlegs available online. Speaking for myself, I still collect Queen bootlegs recorded in late 1970s, and since I can’t find any official recording from some shows… there’s no other choice, really.
When it comes to games and movies, things are changing rapidly. While there are plenty of free games around, most movies aren’t available for free. Of course, you can go to some torrent tracker and find them, download and watch, but that’s illegal, as long as that movie is not one freely distributable over the Web, like Home 2009.
In many cases, there’s a very thin line between legal and not legal in the land of file sharing, but you can always ask those behind the product you want to download and they should tell you if that Angelina Jolie movie is really freely downloadable or not.
One last thing to say, guys – we didn’t speak about the tools used to download legal or illegal content, but there are also some traps you need to avoid when choosing one… and since we should go through some of the free file sharing sites available out there first (I am talking about torrent trackers, of course), I guess there’s plenty of stuff to think about until our next encounter in the land of file sharing, don’t you think?
Whoops… I just told you about the next two topics in this series! Anyway, you can still drop your suggestions below, so if you have something more interesting in mind, don’t be shy! 
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