[BlueSkyJaunte]

I didn't want to head down this path since I'm aware there are professional (or semi-pro) musicians who hang out here. But...

1) Copyright infringement is NOT STEALING. I do not condone copyright infringement (or stealing, for that matter), but there is a definitive, legal distinction between the two, regardless of what the RIAA or Lars Ulrich tell you. The 911 "download" analogy is spurious.

2) The RIAA brought this on themselves by resisting both progress and technology and by attempting to squeeze the jelly out of Joe Consumer and John Artist at the same time. How is it that manufacturing costs have gone down and production costs have gone down, yet CD prices have increased monotonically since the inception of the format (excluding Universal's recent announcement--which screws the retailers)?

3) Large corporate entities have too much power over our easily-bought goverment and deserve any shafting we can possibly give them. Why is the maximum penalty for selling a burned copy of a CD worse than that for armed robbery (hyperbole, yes, but not by much)?

4) Numerous analyses have shown that the "downturn" in music sales can be more easily linked to (a) the economy and (b) the crappy musing getting produced these days than to Kazaa, Napster, or what-have-you.