I want to strongly suggest against LIMEWIRE for it is the most troublesome backdoor hacking out there especially when one doesn't know what one is doing. About half of my clients bring their puters to me with problems starting from Limewire...

Torrenting is not as safe as one think. ANY TYPE OF P2P is NOT safe completely...we are talking about insecure FTP's and people hacking into your accounts even if you think you have firewalls up the wazoo....do any respectable site with the experts and most of them will strongly suggest against most P2P stuff...

once again, that is also my opinion based on what I've seen and trouble shot...

with that said, this is what I feel about downloading music.

In the era that we came from, it was LEGAL to download songs from the radio onto our tapes. It was LEGAL for us to backup our music to another tape. Almost everyone our age did it.

and if the music was good, we went out and we BOUGHT the tapes even though we can just share it. Back then, it was consider a proud and honor thing to own your own latest music album from so and so if we loved it....cause it is like owning a good piece of Artwork such as Georgia O or Ansel Adam.

It was also the age of good music...

Personally, I can't listen to 70% of the crap (my very personal opinion) that's out there these days. They are crap to ME...I can't imagine myself listening to "Don't you wish your girlfriend was more like moi" in 20 years...or
"Bye Bye Bye" in 30 years...

but I will listen to "Yesterday" again and again...

yes, I do agree to some extent that it IS stealing...however....

In the days of the LP's where they have artists drawing on their albums and they TRAVELED everywhere for FREE just to get an audience to listen to their music. Singing out from the back of their VW or their old pickup trucks or their old trailers,they were practically giving away their music in hope that someone would listen to their music. And even after giving a lot of their records away, if it was GOOD, they would still sells thousands if NOT millions of records cause it was just GOOD MUSIC!

the record industry wants one to believe that they are hurting? Really? When was the last time anyone saw one of those artists out on the street begging for food? When was the last time anyone saw one of those crappy record producers driving a pinto?

Ok, if one is talking about trickling down to the person that works at a record store, sure, they get hurt, but then they just hire someone else. And that's NOT the complete picture...

Record producers and "musicians" and I use that term loosely are making tons more money these days...do anyone forsee Madonna begging on the street corner anytime soon? Probably not...

These days, anyone can create a song on youtube and it can be a hit just based on how many views...

I am sorry, that's my strong opinion...

I know it's an imbroglio...if a person really want to download songs, one can find a song on youtube and use a converter to convert that to MP3 file

that is probably the safest way....I won't show people how to do that, but you can do a search and probably find it. Just look up converting youtube files to mp3. You can even convert youtube files to MPEG2 files so you can burn it to your DVD.

And if downloading is wrong. Then millions of those songs on youtube should be shut down...seriously...they are downloading movies, tv shows, music left and right and I don't think they are asking the original artists' to see if it is OK

I am not saying it is right. Cause it IS stealing...but if one is to say black and white about one thing, then it should be black and white across the board...

Anyways, I can respect all the opinions but I think the industry needs a wake up call and stop putting out crap...I still buy CD's...but only if I really really like it...I am willing to shell out money for good stuff..if it is something that is a hit today and sleeps tomorrow such as "My Hump?"..forget about it...

oh well, I should've just shut up about this but I have kids that are struggling musicians and I've known people that I grew up with that were struggling musicians and blah blah blah...

OK, will shut up now...LOL