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Around the globe, the record industry has gone on the offensive and who can blame them? Faced with numerous peer-to-peer networks and bit torrent clients, it has never been easier for individuals to obtain musicfor free. Having given birth to the term illegal downloading, the record industry claims the activity seriously threatens the development of musicand artists. But does this argument have any validity or is it a clever corporate spin?

Whilst the record industry have not published any factual information to support this claim, there is certainly information to show that, those illegally downloading musicactually spend, on average, some 27% more on musicthan those who exclusively confine their activity to the legal download sites and pay for every track in advance.

Recent research by the UK software house, Remlap Software, themselves a publisher of a musicdownload application, suggests that, illegal downloaders are anything but the thieves the record industry labels them as.

The term illegal download is in itself an interesting phrase. While most people would define illegal as an activity which is outlawed under Criminal Law, the Oxford Dictionary merely states, contrary to law. The difference between public perception of the definition and the officially recognised version may only be a subtle, but it is powerful enough for the record industry to exploit.

Certainly they would have you believe that, illegal downloading of musicis theft. In doing this, the record industry further re-enforces the public perception that such activities are in contrary to CRIMINAL law; with all the serious consequences such an offence implies. The truth of the matter is, there is no criminal offence in either the EU or USA of downloading musicwithout paying for it.

At best, the record industry could claim that, illegal downloads are in violation of Civil Law, but even this would be spurious. Indeed if such a legal prospect were a reality, every YouTube visitor who has watched (and in doing so, downloaded) a video which violates someones copyright could be prosecuted. And so the whole notion of illegal downloads is a total nonsense.

In desperation, the record industry has scraped the bottom of the barrel, several times and now resorts to suing its own customers. But to date they have not been able to prosecute one case of illegal downloading. In every case they have sued on the allegation that the defendant has distributed musicin violation of copyright. They have been able to do this, because the whole basis of peer-to-peer networks is that each user shares their musiccollection with the rest of the network. It is the act of sharing or distribution which is the offence, not what they have downloaded.

Their eternal effort to force the world to only use pay-for musicdownload sites, the record industry has already persuaded a number of universities and ISPs to turn-off Bit Torrent and Peer-to-Peer traffic. So could this be the end of downloading musicfor free?

In response to this situation UK software developers, Remlap Software considered that there were probably more mp3 files sitting on web servers, than there are on all the peer-to-peer networks put togetherand they were right.

Their freeware application Clickster gives access to over 25 million individual tracks; all found on Internet web servers and available for download. With no sharing of the end-users own mp3 collection, Clickster is being hailed as the first legal mp3 downloads.

One of the great things about Clickster is that, because mp3s are being downloaded from a web-server and not from some guy on a dial-up connection 6000 miles away, the download speeds are much quicker. With an integral media player, tracks can be previewed/played without having to first download the file.

With Clickster clearly navigating around the latest attempts of the record industry to stamp out what they call illegal downloading, the future remains bright. And to paraphrase the Eighties rock-band, Dire Straitsget your musicfor nothing and your tracks for free.

Further information:

Clickster Remlap Software http://www.remlapsoftware.com Record Industry RIAA http://www.riaa.com