I'm with Big Mick on this one, though there can be a few well-argued exceptions. One such is relevant to original music, where the songwriter or composer actively wishes to "put the song about" as it were, and makes MP3s available on purpose. In my case, I have put 8 MP3s on my website and also made them available from Download.com at no charge. I have no problem with these being copied, and indeed they have about 200 "hits" a week on Download.com - 10,000 to date.

The way I see it, that is 10,000 people who have listened to "Empty Handed" (an earlier version, not the new one with Cloudstreet), that otherwise might not have heard of it. Have I missed sales from this? Realistically, perhaps $500 worth. But I have had scores of emails from people through this, from all over the world, and some did buy albums. The thing is, this was MY decision to put the songs out.

At the same time, I was told that the whole of my fourth album is now available on eMule; well, not too happy about that, because someone took the decision out of my hands. It's not so much the revenue loss (again, probably not much), but the arrogance of the c***t that did it, that annoys. As Big Mick says, that is theft pure and simple.