Without copyright, record labels would have no financial incentive to invest in new music. The Copyright, Designs & Patents Act grants various rights to copyright owners and people who distribute copyrighted recordings via peer-to-peer ( P2P ) networks without permission are breaking the law by infringing those rights.

File sharing grants the copyright holder various exclusive rights, including the exclusive right to copy and to communicate works to the public and provides that the exclusive right of communication to the public includes the "making available to the public of the work by electronic transmission in such a way that members of the public may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them".