No no no... it is VERY illegal. When you download, you are recieveing STOLEN files from someone else. If your ISP were to trace all this back to your IP address and computer, it could result in jail time.
But not in Canada the last I heard. The internet age caught them unawares and they're still farting around with the wording and fine print as to why it's illegal. At least that's the Cole's Note's version of what's going on that I got from somebody else. Yeah, yeah..... A friend of a friend of a friend of mine....
Still morally wrong and I used to be on quite the high horse about it. I mean really, you're taking something that you didn't pay for, somebody IS out money for the music. So, I felt very morally upright by paying between .99 and 1.20 per track from puretracks. Zippy downloads, nice copies, I thought it was worth it. That was until I found out, firsthand, how serious they were about the license restrictions. You can only copy, I think, three times. That includes backing it up to Cd, mixing a Cd for your car, or copying to an Mp3 player. So, when my computer was slowly dying, I copied it all over to the new computer. Unfortunately, now I have a lovely list of music on here that won't play. My high horse turned into a half-pint pony.