I would like to offer a perspective from someone who is both a recording musician AND someone who downloads music without paying. I am Canadian, 42 years old.

I am a regular over at THTM and even though I considered myself pretty well-read in terms of British folk before I discovered that page, it opened up a world of music that I either didn't know existed, or DID know existed but could never locate. Anne Lister has given you one perspective on how someone who had their material uploaded without permission to THTM feels; I'm going to give you the other one.

I play in a band called Mr. Pine. Coincidentally, someone made our 2008 album available for upload on THTM and I found out about it naturally. Rather than get upset, I embraced the move and to my delight, sales exploded, we got some enthusiastic emails, and hits to our website went crazy. I spent the next couple weeks mailing copies to international customers. So to anyone who says your sales don't increase when you make your album available for free, I'm proof that sometimes they do. And our album had done pretty well, charting on college stations and getting national attention. Rather than scream and threaten THTM, I was grateful to them, and still am.

Some people are making the observation that it's still illegal. Well, that depends on where you live; our Canadian laws at one time wouldn't go for that. But my main response to that is that just because it's illegal doesn't make it wrong.

The law tells me that I should have to pay for everything I download by a recording artist. But here's an example of where the law makes no sense: When I was 12 or so I loved the Moody Blues song "Nights in White Satin" and I bought the 45. As I became more of a fan of the Moody Blues, I bought a greatest hits package which also contained the song. Later, I bought the studio album on which it was originally released. Then they issued it on CD. Then they issued it on a deluxe SACD. So now I've bought the song five times legally. At what point have I earned a free download of it? Just because the format has changed, should I have to pay again and again?

Another thing that I disagree with is the idea that if you download it, that makes you a thief. Not so. If you download it, keep it and never buy a proper copy, you HAVE stolen it - I'm not going to argue with that. But what about people like myself, who use it as a try-before-you-buy process? I download, listen, and if I don't like it, I delete it, and if I do, I buy it? Am I a thief? Sites like THTM have only ever made me purchase more music, and my CD racks have several thousand now. I do sleep well at night. I don't like being lumped in with people who don't pay for it, even if we've obtained it the same way.

So is it fair to assume that everyone who downloads it is stealing it outright? And, legal or not, what about the different ways this is BENEFITTING the artist? The THTM scenario put our music in the hands of people who never would have heard it otherwise. I am not going to CHARGE them to find out about it; they'd never bother! And how many times was I burned as a kid when I heard one song by an artist, liked it, bought the album, then found the rest of the album was terrible?

(I'm also a college radio DJ, and will play things I've downloaded on the air, giving them exposure they might not have had - another benefit.)

This is a technology that isn't going to go away; I think artists would do themselves a great favour to find ways to make it work for them, rather than insult people interested enough to have a listen and call them thieves. I can appreciate that some people would like to have their permission given first; but from where I sit, as an artist, I don't personally feel the need to give people permission to do something that I think is far more beneficial than detrimental.