Alternatives to P2P
There are now a number of legal music download services available, including Apple's Itunes service and mp3.com. These allow you to buy single tracks or complete albums at a reasonable price. Some sites cater for more specialist tastes, such as the cleverly-titled ayepod.net which sells downloads of Scottish traditional music. There are also a number of sites offering free music downloads, such as music.download.com.
Free software is available from a number of sites including shareware.com and tucows.com. Some of this software is freeware, meaning that it is totally free to users. Other programs are shareware, meaning that users are permitted to download and try an evaluation copy before deciding whether or not to buy the software, often for a nominal fee. Some evaluation copies have restrictions, such as only working fro a certain number of days, or limits on the size of files that can be handled.
Many freeware programs are small utilities, but there are major items available, including Linux, an operating system which many believe to be superior to Windows, and Open Office, an application suite which is compatible with Microsoft Office and provides similar features.
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This would be a good time to complete your logbook for this topic. Produce a list of music or video files you have downloaded from legal download sites or a list of sites where music or video can be downloaded legally. Check with your tutor to find out exactly what to do. |
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