Legally speaking, you can't justify piracy. What we feel is ethically right doesn't hold much weight in the legal system.

A truer statement was never spoken.

The opinions expressed in this sub-thread are common ones. Most people feel that CDs cost way too much, and therefore feel somehow justified in pirating a few songs. And it's hard to argue that the record companies are justified in those high prices. That doesn't make it legal to pirate songs off the internet, though.

Personally, I'm not going to condemn someone for downloading music from the internet. But I can't condone it, either. It may not be legal, but it's sure easy, and it's sure hard to get caught if you do it. And there sure are a lot of people doing it.

The interesting thing about this is the opinions of the artists. Everyone agrees that the artists should be paid for their work. But realistically, most of the cost of a CD goes to the record companies. The artists (for the most part) just want people to listen to their music and aren't that interested in getting rich off of the music. There are some notable, vocal exceptions (*COUGH* Lars Ulrich *COUGH*), but those folks are really just working as mouthpieces of the record companies and the RIAA.

What's going to happen (and it's already happening), is that we'll start to see a shift, where artists no longer distribute their music through a record company. You'll be downloading MP3s directly from the artists web sites, and they'll be so cheap that there's no reason to go hunting for pirated copies. 50 cents a song sounds like a sweet spot to me. Artists already have access to high-quality digital recording tools that are cheap enough to allow them to work out of their garage, and it costs next to nothing to host a site and set up an e-business. Mark my words, we'll see the demise of the big-budget record companies in our lifetime. This hubub over internet music piracy is just growing pains- the last death spasms of the record companies as they slowly become extinct.

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Tony Fabris