I'm not going to add to the downloading-songs-that-you-haven't-paid-for debate. However, I read a very interesting article by, of all people, Courtney Love, on Salon (don't have the URL with me ATM) that has an interesting point.

Talking about that Pearl Jam CD, how would you feel if you knew that of that $19 or $12, none of that went to the artist? Certainly, a lot of artists have gone bankrupt at the same time as their albums are selling hundreds of millions of dollars - because they don't own that album, the record companies do. And guess who keeps all the profits?

Courtney's very much in favour of Napster, or anything which gets her work listened to by a wider audience. She didn't write it to sit on shelves and gather dust, or to be sold as 'content', or to be denied to some people because the marketing execs didn't think that chain of record stores was doing them a good deal. Because ultimately, it's art - to be enjoyed and listened to and played with, not to be locked away under copyright and trademark and only sold to the highest bidder.

While I use Napster, my collection of CDs far outweighs that volume of tracks by orders of magnitude. I'm still buying CDs. But one cannot help but feel that all the artists who really do care about their work are being helplessly shafted by greedy execs who are quite happy to pull the rug out from under them (witness several very dogdy pieces of copyright law revision in the States) just to make a buck.

But I suggest you pick up the article at Salon and read it yourself.

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.