Do you download music? If not then you’re very much in the minority. Research by Forrester Research Inc. has shown that by 2011, half of all music bought in the US will be music downloads; by 2012, music downloads will surpass CD sales. Legal downloads of MP3 music files are predicted to grow at an impressive rate of about 23% per year for the coming 5 years.

These are mind-boggling figures; and these deal with just legitimate recorded downloads. Free MP3 downloads are not included in these totals and could probably far exceed the legal numbers. Make no mistake: MP3 downloads are big business, and they are here to stay.

This change in consumer focus will change the industry as we know it. Sure buying online is convenient – and in today’s I-want-it-right-now culture that is key – but we will inevitably lose the romanticism associated with browsing through CD stores looking for the latest releases.

A bunch of filesharing rogues in Iceland were convicted of their wrongdoings last week. Each of the nine convicted had been using the DC++ filesharing website for sharing music and movies. DC++ is a filesharing service used by hordes of Icelanders, so it’s anyone’s guess how many more convictions there will be.

Those poor Icelanders. They spend their windows in darkness, freezing cold, just wanting to get a few tunes. Now they will likely think twice before turning to the filesharing networks.

Bjarki Magnússon was given a 30-day provisional sentence because he established a filesharing portal. The rest of them got a couple of years on probation. $39,000 in legal fees also have to covered.

Snaebjörn Steingrímsson, chairman of the Association of Film Right-Holders in Iceland and opponent of filesharing, was outraged at how lenient the sentences were, citing that filesharing is a serious offense and should be treated as such in a court of law.

Evidently scared of being punished for getting their free music downloads, Iceland’s net traffic has dipped 40% while high-profile raids and court cases have been going on.

The benefits of home based business are becoming clear to many in the U.S. and across the world as more and more people set up to work from home. Statistics collected in 2006 estimate that online home based businesses account for an annual revenue, in the U.S., of more than $100 billion dollars. This is quite a considerable sum and it’s clear that people are starting to realize the multitude of advantages offered by this method of working.

Why start a home based business? Money is the obvious first reason: some people simply cannot – or do not want to – make ends meet with just the income from one job. These people find that starting their own business will help them in their goal of financial independence. Other advantages that make home based business a solid idea have to be the lack of commenting, the lack of a boss, and the lack of an office in which people make office politics their sole aim of the day.

It seems like tons of new filesharing programs have popped up in the past few months. One more to consider is DropBox, which claims to make filesharing and storage simple. As a filesharing program, DropBox is easy to use and works perfectly with Windows and OSX.

It’s in Beta at the moment. DropBox works by users putting a file in a DropBox folder that is then synced up across your computers. It’s probably not going to change the world, but it is supposed to be a very fast way of sharing files.

This is obviously not a service for getting free music downloads, but if you have music you want to share, DropBox might be worth a try. One cool touch is that if you accidentally delete a file, you can un-delete it and get it back. If you’ve got a decent-sized group of friends who like filesharing and swapping music, you can get a network up and running.

Filesharing in Israel became a whole lot harder recently after the Haifa District Court ordered the country’s three largest ISP to block access to the Israeli filesharing site httpshare. The move came after a petition was put together by Israel’s 12 biggest record labels.

Although httpshare contains no actual music or movie files, the site does have links to various filesharing sites, which is why the record labels are up in arms. Site operators have been outraged at the decision, citing that the filesharing site is perfectly legal. The filesharing site changed its IP address but the ISPs caught on and blocked the site again.

Israel’s filesharing battle has now begun. This again raises the debate whether filesharing websites like this should be targeted. They don’t, after all, host any files themselves, but merely offer access to various sites. However, Israelis keen on filesharing can still access external sites, making the whole ordeal seem ultimately pointless.

If you take a look around on the web and do some research on Liberty League International you will probably see that there is much mixed opinions. Some people are crying out that the whole venture is a scam. Others note that they have built a very profitable home business as a result of the venture.

Is Liberty League International a scam? No. The detractors are invariably failed entrepreneurs that didn’t realize the extent of work that was required to make their business a success. Some of the detractors have even been found to be from direct competitors.

Liberty League International may have made their own bed somewhat by providing a sub-standard ‘product’, but the value of the marketing and networking that comes out of working a direct sales business is invaluable in itself. Indeed the strength of the business model is such that people have been able to make successful home businesses despite the poor product line.

It is these successes and failures that newer companies such as LifePath Unlimited have been able to learn from and capitalize upon. Were it not for Liberty League International’s trail blazing in the mid 2000’s, these newer companies would still have a lot to learn.

Obviously very chuffed with itself, the RIAA has announced that its aggressive campaign against filesharing has worked in so far as it has, allegedly, reduced the volume of illegal filesharing.

We got this story from a student reporter at the University of Minnesota, so this may be the reason for holes in the report, but from reading the article, the RIAA has no proof that its methods work. All it can offer is references to well-documented cases, such as Jammie Thomas or countless students, as proof that its tactics have had an impact on illegal music downloads.

We already know that student filesharers are getting letters telling them to pay $3,000 or else end up in court. But what does that prove? RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy provided the “evidence” for this particular report. Good job of proving the sky is blue there, Jon.

As for filesharing and illegal music downloads, we can’t say how effective the RIAA’s methods are, but we do know that filesharing has not stopped.

Although we aren’t really behind the RIAA and the war it has been waging against students accused of filesharing illegally, we would strongly advise any student who is caught out for filesharing to pay the out-of-court settlement fee rather than let the case go to court.

It’s not a matter of principle, but rather common sense. The law is the law and if you find yourself with a hefty fine, you have to pay it. One student at the University of Maryland University College, who goes by the name of Jessica, refused to pay the out-of-court settlement after being caught sharing nearly 300 songs with the filesharing program Limewire.

We commend Jessica for standing up against the RIAA, but is it really worth ruining your education over? There are other ways to make a stand. As Jessica says, the $3,000 settle is ridiculous, but this is the risk we all run by using filesharing programs to get free music downloads.

In their defense, the RIAA did offer Jessica a six-month payment plan, but that wasn’t enough and the case will now go to court where, in all likelihood, Jessica will be slapped with a hefty fine.

Dark days.

We’ve touched on this briefly before: The Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) came up with the barmy idea of a $5 tax being applied to all Internet users in Canada to compensate for all the people who get their music downloads illegally through filesharing programs or BitTorrent, etc.

The proposal was officially put forward last week. While it is understandable that artists are a bit annoyed at the way music downloads are taking over the world, such a tax is absurd.

Why should people who never use filesharing programs for illegal music downloads have to pay a tax that has nothing to do with them? And what about the fact that people who do use filesharing services might have never downloaded a single Canadian song? Why should Canadian musicians get all the money?

The arrogance of the SAC is astounding. Why stop at filesharing? Why not tax people for buying blank CDs. Oh wait, they already did that.

There would simply be no way to implement this bizarre idea. Canadians, eh. How long before Canadian musicians look at the filesharing clampdowns in Britain and Australia and try a different tactic? Filesharing is on the increase, but people are still buying music. A better solution than this tax would be to look at the marketing methods used in the Canadian music biz.

Apple’s iTunes store continues to grow into a world-dominating resource for legal music downloads. The music-download giant now stands as the second most-popular music retailer in the US, trailing only Wal-Mart.

iiTunes has more than 50 million customers all keen to get their hands on the latest legal music downloads of fresh new tracks and reissued classics. To date, Apple claims that more than four billion legal music downloads have been sold through iTunes – that’s insane.

iTunes also boasts a huge catalogue of more than six million songs. According to NPD, almost half of all US teens did not buy a CD in 2007, instead choosing to get music downloads either through services like iTunes, or else filesharing programs like Ares or Limewire.

Legal music downloads now account for about 10% of all the music acquired in the US. The number of people buying legal music downloads increased by five million to 29 million this year compared with last, but is still dwarfed by the number of people using different free music download software