I feel I must make a point which is often overlooked in the whole p2p debate.
Skinnyfatz says, "music file swapping is wrong, because the artists that create the music don't get paid".
Remember for a moment, that the vast majority of artists and musicians don't make a cent from art or music anyway! They usually have to buy their own gear, pay for rehearsal space and drive miles to do pub gigs that barely cover the petrol. Most musicians I know would love the opportunity to be heard in another state, country or the other side of the world - whether they made a dollar out of it or not.
The people screaming loudest are the record companies, not the artists, because the internet is replacing what they do. Think about it. The record companies have no talent of their own, they go out and find it when it is cheap and desperate, they pay it next to nothing and reap huge profits from 'publicity and distribution'. Well gee, the internet can do the 'publicity and distribution' for free, which leaves the record companies looking fat and ineffectual.
There is a possibility that artists can make more money from p2p, if music were treated more like shareware. Download it free, listen free, and if you like the stuff send the artist a couple of bucks to fund future work. It works for software, why not music? How much does an artist make from the sale of a CD anyway? Not as much as the record company, that's for sure.
It used to cost a huge amount of money for studio work to cut a disc, but now anyone who is GENUINELY into it for the art can get a job delivering pizzas and buy the hardware and software to do their own work. Artists of the future may never cut a CD anyway! Music will be created digitally, transmitted digitally, and listened to from a digital source.
CDs are a ripoff, we all know this. There are scratch-resistant plastics out there, do they make CDs from it? No. We are paying for the rights to own a copy of that music, are we? So if I have a damaged disc, which I have paid the rights to, I can swap it for an undamaged one can I Mr. Record Company? Oh, I have to pay the same amount again?
It is getting harder and harder for the record companies to justify their parasytic existence, and I expect that we will see the end of them within 10 years. They may move into cyberspace to become 'channels' bringing you the music 'you want' and providing you with the download for a fee. But it won't be the same kind of money they can currently make from each and every CD.
The only 'artists' that p2p disadvantages are those that are big enough to actually make money from the record companies, and there really aren't that many of them.
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