Sarah Vaughan Clifford Brown Rar Software For Windows more. Downloading Without Paying: Why is it illegal? When a movie or song is produced and marketed, everyone involved in the process has monetary gains from the sale of that product. Therefore, that product is protected by copyright law so that it cannot be copied, reproduced or resold without their permission. If you did not pay for a song, movie or other media file that has a copyright, then downloading that file is a crime. Likewise, distributing a copyrighted media file, whether via electronic or non-electronic methods, without the express permission of the copyright holder is also illegal. Who's Watching? The two primary groups that police the downloading of music and movies are the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

These two groups constantly monitor downloads and websites for copyright violation. They tend to pay close attention to colleges and universities. When they see that a song or movie has been downloaded illegally, they notify the school who then takes steps to internally identify the person who downloaded the file. There can be serious legal and financial ramifications to illegal downloading. At Webster, Information Technology (IT) receives infringement notifications from the RIAA or MPAA. IT immediately makes a copy of the logs which enables activity to be traced back to a specific Internet port. Each port is associated with a person.