: Mostly everybody says kazaa is illegal, but it seems that no one cares. I believe that Kazaa is illegal, but does anyone has any substantial proof to support it besides a "yes" or "yeah, becuase it's pirating". : There is nothing illegal about the Kazaa software or network. However, using it to download copyrighted material may be illegal in your country/province/state. It depends on the exact laws... heck, federal copyright laws are so shady that it depends a fair deal on the presising judge if you ever get taken to court.
: - What exactly separates Kazaa from the first Napster? : - Not much separates Kazaa from Napster. The main differences are that Kazaa's network is more decentralized, and that there is an ad-ware component in Kazaa.
: - How does the government go about finding Kazaa users? : - The government doesn't find Kazaa users. They don't give a hoot. It's the RIAA and MPAA that are tracking users, and ironically, the way they do it is just by sitting as users on the network Kazaa uses, and monitoring people's behaviour.
: - I guess Kazaa lite is safer than Kazaa, but is it illegal too? : - Kazaa Lite is exactly like Kazaa except that it has the ad-ware component removed. So it's just as legal/illegal as Kazaa.
: - Can anyone give me some good suggestions on where to get music off the internet legally. (Preferrably for free, obviously). : - You can't get popular music anywhere for free. But there are some sites such as PureTracks.com or Apple iTunes which provide you with music for a low price per track or give you a limited number of downloads for a monthly fee. Be warned, though - the music on many of these services is in Windows Media Audio, which doesn't sound too great.
: - I've also noticed that some people are saying things along the lines of, "If you like the band/artist so much, then go but their album". Well, what if you only like one or two songs that the artist produced? It sucks to go buy an album for only one or two songs, especially if you don't care about the band/artist much either. That's why I used kazaa, so I could find favorable single songs. : As I said, you always have available services such as iTunes and PureTracks where you can download single tunes.
