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With all you folks wanting stuff for free, almost reads like Democratic Underground..

Here's a quote from the WSJ article that directly answers your 'stuff for free' claim.

I've ripped hundreds of CDs onto my computer but I'm not a criminal or a pirate. These are all CDs that I paid (or overpaid) for. I often prefer to listen to the music I've bought on my computer. My PC has decent stereo speakers, and I spend a lot of time working there. But it's more than that. With the songs on my hard drive, I have instant access to my entire collection -- much better than rooting through piles of discs. I also like to transfer the files to my portable MP3 player so I can listen at work without schlepping CDs back and forth. And I take songs from several albums and burn them onto custom-mix CDs ("Still More 80s") for the car.

Copy-proof CDs won't let me do any of that. Certainly record companies are entitled to take measures to stymie widespread copying, in which hundreds or thousands of illegal duplicates are made from a single CD. But somehow the legacy of Napster has given all copying a bad name.

Did you know that under U.S. copyright law, it's generally considered permissible to make copies of music you've purchased? "It's completely legal," explains Jessica Litman, a law professor at Wayne State University and the author of "Digital Copyright." As long as you're making a copy for private, noncommercial use, you're pretty much in the clear. File-sharing services have gotten into trouble by enabling copying on such a massive scale that it's not really noncommercial even if no money changes hands.

It's not about wanting stuff for free - it's about selling a product that people want, for a fair price, and MAKING SURE THE ARTISTS GET PAID TOO. None of the above is happening in the recording industry. A few select artists will make money - but those artists who live "high on the hog" usually do so on the "company credit"... once their records stop selling (either because the record company deems it, or they weren't any good in the first place) the mansions and the cars go back to the bank. After that, they have nothing.

< "With all you folks wanting stuff for free, almost reads like Democratic Underground.." >

Don't click on this.....You can't have any!

Told you.