Copyright

As with most people, the most frequent encounters with copyright laws for me is with music. It is because of these laws that I choose to purchase all of my music through iTunes. Years ago, I would download music for free from a variety of sources, but as people started to be fined heavily for doing this, for smaller quantities of music that I had downloaded, I decided to delete that music and only purchase music from that point on.

I find it interesting to hear how artists feel about their music being downloaded illegally.  In general, I would think that more popular bands would not want their music to be downloaded illegally, but for less well-known bands, it is a source of publicity. However, this is not always the case. For example, Dave Matthews Band encourages the trading of tapes of live shows. They recognize that without this interaction between fans, they would not have risen to the fame that they now have. Of course they would prefer their studio albums to be purchased, but fans are able to share live recordings at no risk on a DMB-affiliated network, Ants Marching.