I agree with Dvorak.
The music industry has ben complaining that CD sales in the last year have been going down, and that file sharing is at fault.
Of course, they conveniently forget completely about what any communications undergraduate would be able to quote: the Principle of Constant Media Expenditures. Basically, an individual will have a limited amount of time dedicated to the consumption of media (by this, I mean everything, from TV to Internet, DVDs and so on) Well, look at how many new media channels have sprouted over the past year: more cable programs, HDTV, DVDs with many, many hours of extra materials, digital music channels, new and diverse internet sites... and P2P. I mean, when and why would people actually 1) go to a store and buy a CD when for the same money they could get a DVD of "Coyote Ugly" (

) and 2) when would they have the time to listen to CDs, if even in their cars they now have all kind of new and cool gizmos?
There is also another, totally unforgivable practice: jacking up prices for so-called "Import versions" of various albums, like the Japanese edition of, say Metallica's "Load", coupled with the fact that sometimes it's absolutely impossible to find in the U.S. some excellent albums , or whole discographies, that have been going gold in Europe (and vice-versa). Remember how the record companies played the game of changing Beatles albums, so that they would force people to buy all existing versions in order to have all the tracks?
I have no sympathy for the fat bastards who run this billion-dollar business of putting things like "Britney's Pears" (LOL!) on the market. I can't remember any good album produced last year, for instance...
Last but not least: personally - and I think there are many people like me out there - I very rarely download commercial albums. 95% of what I get on the Net is either bootlegs - concert recordings which, naturally, would never be put on CD by the industry - or live mixes by various DJs, like Sasha, Oakenfold and others. By the way, these mixes are also a category that has serious tilted the balance of time in what my own media expenditures are concerned...
So why should I be prevented from using P2P, when I don't even overlap with the music industry?