/RANT ON

All Y'all that equate downloading with stealing need to get in touch with reality.

The only entity that could possibly be considered "defrauded" in this case is a corporate entity, the record company that produces the product, since they collect 83-92% of wholesale gross per unit.

If the record is self-released, well, good on you for having an mp3...and happy days living out of your car. I know how much money it costs in advertising and promotion to release a record with any reasonable sales expectancy. I was in the record business for 5 years(3 of those were "hobby interest" according to my accountant). The label that I helped found put out more than 30 different products by 15 bands, some of which we sold to larger interests (Lava/Atlantic, Reprise, Restless, to name a few).

One of the things that I ranted on about then (as now) is IF YOU ARE NOT A HOUSEHOLD NAME, YOU DO ANYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO GET PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO YOUR WORK. This includes free distribution of select materials, often by giving away units to people who will play them for public consumption. Since most PD's are pompous assholes, the next best step is to get on a PtP share service and give the public a few tunes.

Don't call it stealing. Most of the mp3's that are collected by the "folk and acoustic" crowd are from artists that don't even own their rights anymore. Back-catalog acquisition of foundering folk labels has been a specialty of a certain large East-coast label for years now...whose mouth are you stealing the food from when you download a back-catalog selection? You might think you are, but the initial catalog outlay has probably long ago been amortized, and someone is getting rich from other peoples' musical contributions.

No? Just think about Michael Jackson, who owns the Beatles' Masters rights. Hmmm...Sold to make a car commercial? And Sir Paul and company didn't see a dime, and never will?

It is not stealing. It is use. I don't burn cd's from my vast mp3 collection, they are merely 0's and 1's on my harddrive...floating out occasionally when I listen to them.

/RANT OFF