Dowloading music for an MP3 player - can anyone enlighten me?

[Surfermummystomb]

Step-d is getting an MP3 player for her birthday and seems to think she can fill it with downloads from the internet. I thought you had to pay for them and that anything free is illegal. Is that the case?

here

should have said
here is a thread about it

it's not illegal as such...

The thing that is illegal is file sharing, i.e. if I have 10000 mp3's on my computer and I allow others to download those mp3's from me, then I am the one breaking the law by effectively distributing the mp3's. The people that download from me aren't actually breaking the law.

Until recently there were a lot of peer to peer file sharing programmes out there, but most of these have now closed. The way a lot of them have got round the issue is by making their service a subscription service - you pay a fee for the software, and then you can download from other users. But a lot of these programmes are not as secure as you would perhaps like and therefore I would be careful about what you are doing.

Her best option would be to sign up to a more legal service, Itunes is one of the most popular, although obviously I don't know what mp3 player she is getting and whether it would be compatible. I personally use napster, they charge 709p per track, but they also have other membership options available if you are particularly prolific downloader. And they're legal

oops I meant 79p per track ...

Ok, so pretty much as I thought and explained to her. We aren't getting it for her, her mum is, and I don't know what sort it is. They don't have a computer at her mums and I think she thought she could just come here and download whatever music she wanted for nothing.

She looked a bit horrified when I said it would cost, and then couldn't understand why anyone would want to bother asking for 75p!

We're getting her a Nintendo which I know even less about!!