Chapter 16: The Legal Alternatives

---

Overview

Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it.

—Andrew Young

File sharing is perfectly legal in itself; it’s only when you share certain types of files that you may be breaking the law. So while the recording industry tries to track down blatant file sharers and haul them to court while millions of people continue sharing files anyway, there’s a third group of people who have seen the popularity of file sharing and decided to capitalize on it rather than sue it.

These new legal file sharing networks collect money through subscriptions or charges for each file downloaded, and they redistribute part of that money as royalties to the copyright holders of the files. The public is happy because they can download the files they want without the risk of getting sued, the copyright holders are happy because they get paid for their work, and the file sharing networks are happy because they get to earn money legally too.

Unlike the freewheeling file sharing networks that allow you to share anything-from music and videos to books and pictures, legal file sharing networks tend to specialize in niche markets, which means that if you want to find music, you have to join one file sharing network, and if you want to download movies, you’ll have to join an entirely different file sharing network.

More annoying is the lack of selection and the cumbersome legal and technical restrictions placed on each file that you download. Because each file sharing network needs to make agreements with each recording artist, record label, movie studio, or other corporate entity, you won’t find nearly as many files to download as you can find on the free file sharing networks like Gnutella or FastTrack. Some of the legal file sharing networks even encrypt or modify files so they can only be played on a particular computer or can only be copied a few times—all intended to prevent widespread Internet copying.

Despite these problems, legal file sharing networks have managed to carve out a steady and growing niche market. So if you like the idea of file sharing but don’t want to break the law, take a look at the many legal alternatives.

---