Legal question

Oromocto · February 9th, 2002, 12:42 PM

What is the best program for downloading music, or one of the best? After the Napster fiasco I lost interest in downloading music, and don't know if it is still a popular thing to do, or for that matter what is the legality of it all. Is there a simple way to determine whether a piece of music has a valad copyright? I am retired and only interested in the really old stuff but as I understand it the copyright laws changed to where copyrights can be renewed X number of times. Better still, is there a way to tell if an old piece of music is NOT copyrighted.
Thanks

Lemon[H]ead · February 9th, 2002, 02:04 PM

i use MusicCity Morpheus and i think its pretty cool. Its as legal as you can get downlaoding music from the net.

If a piece of music is stored in any way, shape or form, it has a copyright on it (just by being stored).

Oromocto · February 9th, 2002, 02:24 PM

Thanks lemonHead, I'll take a look at it.

Polygon · February 10th, 2002, 12:54 AM

I use that or WinMX.

WinMX.

OuTpaTienT · February 10th, 2002, 01:16 AM

If you have used Napster then Morpheous will be familiar to you, it's practically an identical interface.

I don't know where you'd look to find out about copyrights, but unless it's classical music that was written 100 or more years ago it's pretty safe to assume it's copyrighted. Heck even the Happy Birthday song is copyrighted.

Oromocto · February 10th, 2002, 10:55 AM

The reason that I asked about the copyright thingwas that during the Napster hearings in Congress they had a group of biig music moguls (comany CEOs) testifying in congress and one of the m The head of MP3, said that it was nearly impossible to determine who owned the copy right. Some music rights are sold to various label producers. Hetold congress that it was sometimes almost impossible to track down the true copyright owner. Think about it, if you downloaded a piece of music , WHO WOULD YOU SEND THE CHECK TO?

ryogenetic · February 10th, 2002, 11:44 AM

Doesnt Mcdonalds own the rights to Happy Birthday or something?

jgargac · February 12th, 2002, 01:53 PM

I use AudioGalaxy for all my music searches. It allows you to opt out of the spyware and bonzi buddy. I used Morpheus briefly, but could never connect with WinMX. I used AudioGalaxy for a few songs, but mostly rip from CD now.

I especially like the ability to queue up downloads with AudioGalaxy.

Jeff

OuTpaTienT · February 13th, 2002, 01:18 AM

I don't think I've tried Winmx. Is it better than Morpheous? I know with Morpheous there is no spyware so no need to worry about opt'ing out.

Morpheous queues uploads and downloads too. You can set the max number of up & down connections you want and anything over that gets queued.

Plus with Morpheous you can search for just music or video or software (and a few other catagories) or you can search through everything.

willy_ph · February 13th, 2002, 01:56 AM

I've used WinMx, Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus, Limewire, Audio Galaxy, and I seem to like Morpheus the best.

Kazaa and Grokster are similar, however they have serious spyware and virus issues. I would go with Morpheus, if I was to disregard the moral issue of breaking the law.