That is an old argument. Do you blame gun manufacturers when someone is shot? Do you blame car manufacturers when someone gets run over? Why not blame the manufacturers of CD burners and CD players too! Do you want computers outlawed because certain people make viruses? Did you know that the IRS actually expects people to report what they make from a garage sale! So if you don't report it, are you stealing from them too? Then should we ban magic markers because people use them to make garage sale signs? Lets face it, if I buy a CD, I should be allowed to make copies or transfer it to my hard drive. Just like I can make a copy of a cassette tape. The music industry tried to get a chip into every cassette recorder to prevent people from copying copywritten tapes. It was not allowed because the process made a difference in the sound quality. That would violate the rights of the artists. However, mpeg encoding does far more damage to the sound quality, so why is it allowed? Why are artists not complaining about their rights on that? Even CD's don't capture all the nuances of a performance. The fact is, most people don't notice and/or don't care. Remeber too that the music industry promised to lower the cost of CD's long ago, but they never did. So they have been ripping us (and the artists) off for years. There is FAR less cost in making a CD than a cassette tape or even a vinyl record. AOL is notorious for GIVING away CD's every day! So you know they are really cheap to make. I realize it is the content we pay for, but every song being shared on gnutella clients was PAID for by somebody. Do you want to pay whenever you let your friends listen to your CD's? Why can anyone record music off the radio for free? Should that be banned too? Artists want to be heard, so radio is good, even if some people record from it. The fact of the matter is that most of the music being shared is top 40 stuff, which is all over the radio and out of style in two weeks anyway. The music industry targets teens, who have less money to spend on music than anyone else, so sharing is a given. Gnutella simply makes this sharing more visible, but it did not cause it.

I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to buy the music I have discovered through file sharing clients, only to find it unavailable or over priced. I WILL NOT pay 15-20 bucks for one song I want on a CD. I would however be glad to buy a custom CD which contains only music I have chosen. The technology is already in place, but licensing such a thing meets a dead end at the hands of the music industry. Gnutella has brought me so much music I have never heard before, because radio stations won't play it, and a mountain of CD's would cost a king's ransom. I would gladly pay for high quality NON-COMPRESSED audio files direct from the artists or record labels, but we will likely never see the day when they agree to that. They have had far too much control for far too long. Every artist can now have their own Web site and distribute music without the record labels at all. That is what should happen, and will if the industry does not get a grip on the reality of gnutella. Napster WAS a golden opportunity for the record industry. There were tons of users ready to be converted to paying customers. But instead of cashing in, the labels just wanted Napster to die, so they could continue with the same old routine, who's time has passed. I don't want to spend time searching for the music I want. I'll pay, but only if I get to choose. I want samples of every song, and I want to pick and choose the songs I want. I also want to download them, with a choice of formats. I don't want to pay extra for shipping, and waiting, when I can have it with a click of the mouse. If it was all that easy (and it can be), artists would be happy, and so would the public. However, gnutella is here to stay. It may morph into something else, but it will always be. Asking it to just go away will not make it so.