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FTC Looking Into Bogus Music Download Sites
from the bait-and-switch dept
The FTC has been convinced to investigate a variety of services that claim to offer "100% legal" access to free music -- but which really charge people $30 to $40 to point them to freely available software to get on various file sharing networks. The amusing part of the story, though, is that one of these sites has responded by promising to remove the "100% legal!" banner from its site. In other words, it sounds like these sites didn't get in trouble for selling something that was freely available, which they had no rights to resell or for pushing people to access unauthorized music files, but for simply telling people that the whole thing was legal. If they did the same thing while admitting that you might be breaking the law for doing so, would they have not gotten in trouble?
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Of course.
Selling something you don't own, that isn't actually worth anything, and making a profit doing it is the entire backbone of the finance industry. You just have to be honest about it.
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Mike,
You seem to think that it is illegal (or at least immoral) to sell something to someone when that person can otherwise get it for free if they only knew how.
That's not illegal, or immoral. I can walk up to my water fountain at work and take a sip, or I can buy a Disani from the vending machine.
Is Disani immoral?
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No. I don't think it's immoral to do that. Not AT ALL. However, if you don't have the rights to sell it... then you're risking serious legal problems. That was the point I was making.
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Just wondering. Does bartering, or trading consitute selling in this context. For example, what if the kid gave copied movies on DVD for the return of cheeseburgers at lunch or maybe getting his car worked on? Would that change the illegality of it?
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