The Not Al Page

The most popular songs he didn't even write (or perform)!

Conclusion:

Please, do the right thing. Follow your heart. Don't let Al's reputation get shot down by stupidity. Because if you do, I will strangle you.

SPECIAL NOTE: I do not condone music piracy. What I do condone is the private consensual sharing of music that follows current applicable fair use laws. Fair use laws state, roughly, that copies of music may be made by consumers for their own personal use or for sharing with friends so long as such copying does not occur at a monetary profit or for the purpose of denying the record company their profits. This definition coincides with the philosophies of such peer-to-peer information-sharing systems as Napster, and Freenet, and Gnutella. Further information can be found here courtesy of BitLaw.

As an example, it would be okay (in my book) to download some MP3s of music by a particular artist to decide whether or not you'd like to purchase his or her albums. It would not be okay to download every song on the album, burn them to a CDR, and then listen to them in your car every day on the way to work. In the latter case, I would hope you respect the artist enough to pay them for their work. For the record, I own all Weird Al CDs that I can get my hands on. The only MP3s I own are of music that cannot be found elsewhere (Can anyone say "Peter and the Wolf"?) or that carries too high a price to be considered worth buying.