If you do not have legal permission, and you go ahead and copy or distribute copyrighted music anyway, you can be prosecuted in criminal court and/or sued for damages in civil court.
Criminal penalties can run up to 5 years in prison and/or $250,000 in fines, even if you didn’t do it for monetary or financial or commercial gain.
Having the hardware to make unauthorized music recordings doesn’t give you the right to steal.
January 25, 2005
Statement of Del Bryant, BMI President & CEO on Supreme Court Decision to Hear Grokster Case
“We are pleased that the United States Supreme Court has agreed to give copyright owners the opportunity to present the argument that two principal suppliers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software services, Grokster and StreamCast, should be secondarily liable for the massive copyright infringement which they make possible. BMI urged the court to look carefully at what we believe were errors in the decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to exempt Grokster and StreamCast from liability. We hope that when the Supreme Court hears all the evidence, it will overturn the Court of Appeal’s decision, finding instead that software makers who enable unauthorized, illegal peer-to-peer file sharing are liable for copyright infringement.”