Dear Zozimus
People have had the facility for years to copy recordings they've bought or borrowed. As to the copying of vinyl - again, bootleg copies were around way before the advent of USBs, MP3s and the whole shebang. It is now, as it was then, illegal. I have all the equipment I might need (as one day I might finally get around to putting my vinyl collection onto my iPod). However, I cannot legally make CD copies of the vinyl Anonyma album and sell them - and so, surprising as it may seem to you and Suibhne, I don't.
I am getting tired of the suggestion that we all behave the same way. I don't claim to wear a halo, but I personally don't make illegal copies of music for resale (or gift, come to that) or upload or download music I have no rights to. That's the choice I've made in this situation - I suppose I have a vain hope still of "Do as you would be done by" as an operating system.
Years ago I remember attending a party where a good friend brandished a wrapped gift she'd brought for the person whose birthday we were celebrating. "Guess what it is?" she said. "I made her a copy of your album. I knew she'd like it." She didn't understand why I wasn't pleased and flattered, but then she hadn't paid for the studio costs and manufacturing costs of the album in the first place, which I was still recouping with sales. And that was well before uploading was even a twinkle in anyone's eye, but the issue is exactly the same one - except now the joyful givers of other people's music don't know how many people might be receiving it, don't care and still don't understand why we're not pleased and flattered.