As a result of Napster shutting down its free music downloads, internet pirates began searching for other reliable websites that permitted them to illegally obtain their favorite songs, such as Audiogalaxy, BitTorrent, Limewire, and Kazaa, all of which were either discontinued, began charging its users for music, or was shut down in the end due to copyright infringement
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With advances in technology and media sharing, the modern generation finds no wrong doing in downloading free videos, movies, TV shows, video games, expensive software, music, and ebooks. One of the main factors why people ultimately support free downloads is the economy and the cost of entertainment products. For example, the price of popular artists' CD albums have drastically increased over the years. As a result, many people believe that record companies charge too much money for an album that contains only one hit song; the rest of the album is fillers. With the benefits of free music downloading sites, consumers are not required to purchase the entire album in order to listen to one song that they actually want or like. In addition, the majority of illegal-downloading consumers are teenagers and college students, neither of which have the money to spend on a $15 CD album and especially, expensive software such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office. Several parents actually encourage their children to freely, yet illegally download media on the internet, so they do not have to give their children money to buy a CD or a movie (angelfire.com). .
Moreover, people are well aware of the illegality and immorality of piracy; they still do not reconsider not partaking in this crime. Although the government has recently approved a number of laws in the last couple decades, they have not been strongly enforced. Therefore, the public does not realize that piracy is a form of stealing another person's work and can lead to serious consequences if caught.
