Legal Ways to Obtain Music, Movies, and TV Through the Internet
There is a comprehensive list of legal music downloading sources at http://www.campusdownloading.com/legal.htm . The MPAA also has a list of legal movie downloading sources at http://www.mpaa.org/piracy_LegalOpt.asp .
Some legal music sources include:
Amazon.com offers a limited selection of free music downloads. Go to the music section of the site and click on the “Free Downloads” subdirectory to browse for your digital tunes.
Apple offers a wide array of music through downloading and streaming. Itunes.com connects you to Apple's iTunes Store, which sells approximately 500 movies for $10 to $15 each. They can be copied to as many as five PCs and “unlimited iPods”. Great for iPod users, iTunes also offers special services such as podcasts and iMix to its customers. Check out the website for more information.
Beatport.com is a secure and legal way to download club music. Music can be downloaded in MP3, mP4 and WAV formats on a pay-per-download basis. The downloads are high speed and very
high quality -- sometimes up to 25mb for one song. Visit this site to learn more.
BuyMusic is part of the larger internet superstore Buy.com. They offer music downloads (Windows Media format) at competitive prices. Check out their FREE sample songs which feature breakthrough artists.
Although we have received some mixed reviews from Terp students about this site, eMusic.com remains the #2 online music service behind iTunes. eMusic allows you to download files to an iPod, an option still not available on many other services. With over 1.3 million tracks, catering to an independant music audience, eMusic is well worth a listen!
Voted as one of the Best of 2004 by PC Magazine, Musicmatch provides instant access to over 900,000 songs. Songs are $.99 cents with most albums costing $9.99.
That’s right, Napster is back! Connect with others and download music from their 1,000,000+ song library. Napster also offers Billboard’s top 40 charts going back almost 50 years!
The Google of the music world, this site keeps track of all the free music available on the web. The downside is that music files are frequently being removed from the sites they index; the upside is that everything is completely legal, free, and there is no risk of getting a settlement letter from the RIAA! Create an account in order to store the music you like and link your favorites to a MySpace page!
From the company that brought you RealPlayer, Real.com offers multiple levels of service. Their RealPlayer music store allows you to purchase and download music. Also, Real Rhapsody offers streaming music so you can listen to music without it taking up as much room on your machine.
Royalty Free Music provides public domain and free license music to motion picture and television companies. They also provide these services to educational institutions (students, faculty, and staff) free of charge. If you need music for school projects such as videos and powerpoint presentations, check this out!!
A free, advertisement-supported site offering legal music tracks and music videos. Nearly one million tracks were provided when the site was launched in the Fall 2007and this number is expected to grow. There are some limits on the music available for many artists, although multiple genres are represented with reviews, recommendations, concert information, and lists of similar artists. The site is not compatible with Apple Macintosh systems and the iPod, although the files work well with most other portable music players and music phones.
Some Legal Movie Sources include:
This site is not for profit. Directors choose to post their documentaries in an effort to get their messages to a wider audience. High-quality streaming technology. Find Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine , as well as many other documentaries concerning politics, religion, poverty, global warming, and more.
Home of the Amazon Unbox, offers around 6,000 movies. Buy or rent a film for $3 to $23, and you can watch it on one computer. In one trial a user complained that, “the software crashed during playback.” However, TiVO owners will be happy to know they can watch movies through Unbox on their TVs.
This promises higher-fidelity images than either iTunes or Unbox. In tests conducted by Consumer Reports the “picture quality started out good, but later got choppy – requiring a restart.” Rentals start at $3, purchases at $10, and you can copy films to three PCs or portable viewers.
Do Not Be Fooled By Subscription-Based Music Websites!
There are many websites deceptively offering paid subscription services for access to music tracks that are not legal. An individual can still be sued by the Recording Industry of America if a website falsely promotes the sale of its music as ‘legal’ when the music has not been obtained through legal means. File sharing programs are only legal when they pay licenses to copyright holders (like iTunes) or when they are used to upload and download material that you have created and therefore own the copyright to.
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has compiled a list of websites that ‘sell’ access to music that is not legally obtained. Please be sure to review this list before giving money to any website offering ‘legal’ downloads.
LimeWire Pro is a service not listed in the CDT's list but about which Project NEThics has responded to inquiries. Customers have come away with the impression that a fee payment legitimizes their downloading. The fee, however, is only for a faster version of the software, or other software features (speedier searches); it has nothing to do with protecting users from copyright liability.
If you have information about another legal resources that you feel we should put on this list, please e-mail us at nethics@umd.edu.
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