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occasionally come across an opera on iTunes, eg, All Opera Musick that is not in my collection. Is there a way to download stuff like this to my Mac, legally?
I thought that is what iTunes was for.
Anything you actually download from iTunes is legal.
Just about all 'music', no matter how you hear/get it belongs to the the artist(s)/writer(s)/copyright holder(s). While there
is some music in the public domain, the rest has real owners, and that is hardly ever you/me. In the USofA, at least, music is just like software, it's yours to enjoy but not to profit from. You are only allowed to listen/use the music/software. You do not
own it just because you paid something for it. That's the law. Period.
Of course, many don't believe that intellectual property deserves or needs basic copyright protection. Usually those people have never created any.
Nor do their opinions change the laws.
Just for arguments sake, let's suppose that while you are at work, someone gains access to your Opera CD collection, copies it and then offers it for free (with S&H, of course). They do this because you have the finest, most complete and well cataloged collection on earth. Would you feel that the work you did over the years, researching, collecting, cataloging, has been stolen, even though you still have all your CDs?
