Why do you need to abide by the copyright law?

Answer 1

Copyright law provides that the author of certain materials has the right to control the use or commercial exploitation of the work that he or she has created. This includes rights to authorise or prohibit the copying, issuing of copies, renting or lending, performing, showing, playing, broadcasting or adaptation of the copyright material.

Answer 2

Copyright laws are designed to encourage creativity by making it viable to create for a living and not have to wait tables. Violating copyright law not only is a violation of federal law, it also devalues the hard work of the artists whose works you infringe.

Answer 3

The easy answer is, it's the law. There are fines and other punishments for infringers.

But a more meaningful answer is that the artists you love are making their living from selling and licensing they intellectual property. If you copy it, you're telling them their work is worth nothing to you, and you're taking just a tiny bit of income away from them. It's a tiny tiny bit, but the more people who do that, the less likely the artist is to be able to create art for a living. The more you upload and share an mp3 that you love with your friends instead of encouraging them to buy their own, the more likely it is that the songwriter will have to go back to waiting tables.

Copyright may seem to limit what users can do with others' intellectual property, but its real goal is to encourage those creators to keep creating.