LuminousVoid

The Center for Democracy and Technology is filing today a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against deceptive “100% legal” download sites. These sites claim to offer, in various ways, “100% safe” and “100% legal” music downloads for a fee of about 20-40 dollars. After signing up, they point you to freely available peer to peer software, like Kazaa or LimeWire, and give you some instructions in how to use it.

This deceives people into thinking that what they get on Kazaa is legal. In fact, what is legal is the distribution of Kazaa and the use of Kazaa to share what you have permission to share. This exposes people to lawsuits from the RIAA and MPAA and also stifles the creation of a legitimate market for music downloads.

Regardless of what one’s attitutes are about Kazaa/Grokster and filesharing software with substantial non-infringing uses, these websites are making money off of deceiving people who are trying to be in compliance with the law.

One website has already replied to a letter from the CDT.

CDT’s press release.
AP Coverage.