My father purchased a 4GB iPod mini two nights ago , and while we were in the car , he asked me if there was anyway to obtain classical music tracks like beethoven at places freely and easily (and legally)? I presumed that they were no royalties or copyright "ownership" on these old classical composers as their works are over 60 years old , but I have been wrong. Can anybody please clarify this for me? And I apologize if the question is assinine and the answer seems to be rather obvious

The work itself may be public domain, but the performance of that work probably isn't. It's possible that some orchestra allows free distribution of its performances though.

http://music.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/pandora/Read.html

http://pan.zipcon.net/

http://pan.zipcon.net/DOWNLOAD.html

http://music.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/pandora/

Absolutely amazing! They even encourage you to leech the whole site! Good quality Vorbis files too!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound/list

As pointed out, performances also have copyright. But it brings up a point..

Disney would tell you that if Beethoven knew that his works would be out of copyright by now, he would not have had enough incentive to write them!
Uh, that's Disney's line for the present day anyhow...

50 free downloads in .mp3 format --preset standard here: Great selection of classical music!

eMusic

wow! that seems like a pretty good offer...$0.25 / per song or less...+ LAME --preset standard files...