1. That's right on! And for the various groups of 700 to 800 poor souls they sue at a time it is criminally expensive for naught - criminalizing natural market behavior for what these jerks think good PR! Outrageous behavior - I say good luck and god speed and all that stuff for the EFF and its friends who argue next week - may the Supremes rule right!

Posted at 5:58AM on Dec 19th 2005 by John Ess

2. This whole conversation needs to be viewed in a broader context. P2P does not just mean Kazaa, eDonkey, Limewire etc. It means burning a CD for a friend. Hooking someone else's MP3 player up to your computer and depositing a few hundred songs. It means IMing or emailing a song.

All of these new capabilities combined should be enough to tank the music industry if they really were that damaging. The fact that year on year unit shipments were up may not be sufficient evidence that say that file sharing helps sales, but it certainly drags out into the sunshine the myth that file sharing can only have a negative impact.

We're beginning to see cases where fan collections / P2P can be leveraged directly into sales, such as at sites like ours, where users ARE BUYING music at iTunes and Amazon after having leveraged P2P data to find a new artist.

Posted at 5:58AM on Dec 19th 2005 by David Sabel

3. My young teenage daughter is a fan of Billy Idol, 1980s punk-mainstream bad boy, as a direct result of P2P.

Two years back, I downloaded a Buffy the Vampire fan-made music video from a website. The music used was "Rebel Yell," and my daughter was suddenly aware of music that preceded her birth. She became an instant, insatiable fan.

We downloaded as many songs and music videos of Idol's as we could find online, but then proceeded to not only buy all his CD's (even the ones that were bombs when they were originally released), but attended a live performance concert here in the U.S. in 2003. It's been over a decade since I've been to a live concert (do souvenir T-shirts really cost that much???), and had she not pleaded to see her heartthrob Billy, my record of non-attendance would still be intact.

Since the time I downloaded that first Buffy music vid, we've spent over $500 on just Billy Idol. I shudder to recap how much more I've spent on other recording artists for her... artists that she would never have known about had it not been for the exposure P2P gave her.

File sharing has revived Idol's career in my household and added some bucks to his retirement coffer. I'm sure thousands (or millions) like me have similar stories. File sharing has made me spend MORE on music than I likely would have.

I also download a number of TV episodes - these are shows that I've watched on TV but didn't tape or decided later that I wanted to have. I fail to see RIAA's distinction between videotaping a show and downloading a show...

To the RIAA: Stop your finger-pointing for easy scapegoats like P2P and acknowledge that poor performances make for poor sales. File sharing is a golden goose that you're ready to hatchet...

Posted at 5:58AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Classic Film