The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) actively works with Internet Service Providers and law enforcement officials to combat music piracy. If the RIAA detects your illegal activity and targets you for a lawsuit, you may find yourself with a hefty bill. According to an article from MSNBC, some college students have faced fines of $750 for each illegally-downloaded song.
When you download a song or album from a file-sharing service or torrent client, you must put your faith in anonymous users within the online community. As a result, the files are not always what they claim to be. Some files may contain viruses, malware, spyware, pornography or spam. Even if find the music you wanted, you may encounter poor quality audio files, since these services have no professional oversight.
When you use a torrent client or file-sharing service, you may unwittingly expose your personal files and folders to other users in the online community. Even if you use firewalls and set up your software's privacy preferences for maximum protection, you still may suffer loss of privacy at the hands of hackers who use malicious software to override security protections. This type of exposure can lead to identity theft.
If you download music illegally from your place of business, you bear some of the same risks as outlined above, but on a larger scale. If your company loses its Internet Service Provider due to illegal activity, or suffers from a widespread virus or security breach, you may lose your job and suffer serious legal consequences as a result of the damages.