What You Don't Know About Downloading Music

**This guide only applies to Canadians but I'm sure many will be intereted in this**

If your like the average Canadian you probably have some kind of mp3 player. Many of the people who own these mp3 players download music to put on their player instead of buying the music off places like iTunes and Napster for 99 cents each... 

Many people have heard that downloading any music off the internet is illegal but what you don't know is that this doesn't apply to Canadians. In 2003 the Copyright Board of Canada imposed a $25 governtment fee on top of the price of all mp3 players. This fee goes into a fund to pay musicians and songwriters for revenues lost from many poeple not buying their albums but instead downloading their music. Now "downloading" is referrign to personal use, not re-selling of any kind or anything that could be considered a copywrite enfringment. Uploading on the other hand is completely illegal which, seems really ironic becasue without uploading there would be no such thing as downloading.

However, I'm not going to complain about the decision to make downloading legal. Even though it takes away from the revenues of artists, its not like downloading could be enforced or controlled in any way. Besides...a $25 fee ontop of mp3 players is more than fair to consumers who(if they were to buy their songs off iTunes, Napster etc) could only get 25 songs, when in reality most people can easily have hundreds of songs on their mp3 and could potentialy have to pay hundreds even thousands of dollars to listen to music.

I'm sure you found this guide helpful in some way, please leave your feedback if you thought this guide was informative/helpful. Thanks.