is this illegal?

[animefreak]

lately i have been reading about the crackdown on p2p sharing and i was wondering if this is can get around it... cause i have been doing this for a while ...

when i want to download a song, i can just realplayer to just download the file ...

like i can do this for myspace music and virtually anything that plays or streams ...

if i cant find what i want on myspace ... i usually go to youtube and download the video from the site and convert it into a mp3

is that getting around system?
can i get caught doing this in like colleges?
im going to college in the fall and i kinda wanna know before i go lol

[animefreak]

i am SOOO sorry ... i did not know that we arent supposed to discuss illegal operations ...

[Kief]

Not sure if it is *cough* illegal *cough* but even if it is, I wouldnt worry about it because its nothing major and there is probably millions of people doing it so I would highly doubt you would get in trouble or that anyone would even notice your doing it

[sady]

Its nothing pure erm... major *Cough* so dont worry *cough* about it x x x

[rippled nipple]

lol there is alot of coughing going on in here...maybe some alergies perhaps

[Ant]

*Cough*, *ahem*, *cough, cough*, excuse me, sorry.

Although, strictly in principal, it is illegal to download copyrighted videos from YouTube, extract an MP3 from them and use it without actually paying for it, the biggest issue the copyright holders have is with YouTube showing the video in the first place.

Looking for a particular track, I'd go straight to YouTube and do exactly the same thing, as do millions of others.

[Ant]

Oops sorry, the P2P thing is a different matter entirely. Although the system in itself is a great idea and entirely legal, people use it to distibute illegal software, movies, music, books and a million other things.

It's like having a gun. You can use it legally or illegally. The gun itself isn't illegal, just maybe what you will do with it.

There have been cases where people in Europe and US were prosecuted for downloading music via P2P, as your service provider can keep tabs on what you are doing and downloading, and investigators can get into your computer to see what you downloaded.

Usually bills and threatening letters are enough to make people *cough* up money and not do it again.

Luckily however, I live in Thailand.