Unless you are paying for the tunes - you may end up with a huge fine. It has been in the news recently. A Minnesota woman, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, was fined 1.92 million dollars for sharing 24 songs in June. Joel Tenenbaum was fined 675,000 on Friday for downloading and sharing 30 songs. Boy - I just don't think it is worth it - not to mention the problems you can run into - like RC described. If you have paid a fee to Limewire and think you are in the clear to d/l music without paying per song - YOU ARE NOT!! YOu have paid a support fee - to Limewire. You really were ripped off. You are still illegally d/l songs. iTunes works great for the iPod - but not for other types of MP3 players. I only use an iPod now - so I am happy with iTunes.

Down.

They are cracking down bigtime, but it's a global problem. A lot of these websites are hosted in Asia where it's more difficult to enforce copyrights. And you need to closely examine the terms of usage - some of these websites put language into their TOS that says sharing copyrighted movies and music is illegal. That means they are off the hook if one of their users gets caught. The user gets prosecuted, but the website doesn't. Read the TOS for Limewire and Kazaa! Students are a big problem (as in the link above) - they just aren't sensitized to taking intellectual property as being theft. You can see that universities and colleges are taking measures to curtail piracy. Producers are trying to eliminate piracy at the source as well. For example people aren't allowed to carry cameras into movie theaters. I remember one news report about a man that was arrested with a camera in his belt buckle! They are also implementing rigid security in the print labs, where one lost print can mean a million pirated DVDs on the market. Producers have also gone to a same day, same date opening for big movies. That means it opens around the world on the same day instead of rolling an opening out on different days for different continents. That stops someone from pirating a movie in the US and selling illegal DVDs in other countries where the movie hasn't opened yet. Anything that is copyrighted is protected by law. "Free" downloads should always be examined carefully.

I use the free version of Spotify, but I don't stream in my car anyway, as it can be too distracting - unless I'm not the one driving. I usually just play the radio or CDs when driving. I have an auxiliary cable that plugs into the dash and whatever device I'm using, since my car is a bit basic and doesn't have Bluetooth capability. I just plug in my phone or my iPod to listen through the car speakers, using the auxiliary setting on the car audio system.