Is it legal to download music if you don’t upload?

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Downloading copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks—is it legal in the US? Judging by the comments and e-mails that we received while covering the two federal file-swapping trials of 2009, it’s clear that some minority of our readership believed that these lawsuits were only about uploading files; some also believed that downloading music was in fact legal as well, and that one was within the law so long as no further sharing took place. Neither position, however, is accurate.