Originally Posted by Neapolitan

I think the legality of the issue is why one's "a normal part of society" and the other is the source of "unnecessary lawsuits." On one side you have ownership of a tangible product, the CD, and ownership is passed to another person with the help of eBay, Amazon etc. The other side deals with the reproduction and dissemination of something which is govern by copryright laws. The latter, "downloading an album from a torrent site etc. (again, no money)," is seen by both the artist and the industry as an infridgement of copyright laws. It is a strange arguement because when you buy a CD you can do anything you want with it, leave it factory sealed and not play it, or play it a thousand times, it doesn't matter to the RIAA; and one is allowed to make a copy of it, or lend it to a friend. P2P is very close to making a copy of it and lending to it as a friend at the same time. But take a few million people with a few thousand albums and you have a few billion albums reproduced by ordinary people using thier computers in lieu of the recording industry doing it. I don't know the actual figures or the amount of money lost, but by their standpoint it is a big problem. I heard 10,000 songs is the limit, I not sure if whether if that is the limit to downloaded songs paid for, not paid for or both. I have to look that up.