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you speak as if online distribution is a proven method of reducing piracy, which it isn't.

True, but that's a little like saying that the general principle "what goes up must come down" does not prove that if I throw this particular ball up, that it will come down. Perhaps not, but that's the way to bet.

What online distribution will do is reduce distribution cost enormously, making it possible to reduce price significantly while making the same profit. There are reasons to believe (let's not conduct Econ 102 here) that the closer we move the "legitimate sale" price to the "Kazaa price," (which is not free), the more legitimate copies will be sold and the fewer Kazaa copies will be created. Can this be proven in advance? No. Have other companies experienced increases in volume after reducing price? Please don't say no.

If distribution goes online, people who have never downloaded music before will get a taste of it- and then they might realize that they can do it for free.

This is the "everyone is at heart a thief" hypothesis, which I choose to reject based on several decades living among these humans. I find that most of them are pretty decent. That's why I say that a Kazaa copy is not free. It has a psychological cost, at least to the person who is not by nature a thief. They know they're stealing. There is a non-zero cost to them every time they download a song. They may not even admit it... but it's there. So you don't really have to go to zero to beat Kazaa. You just have to get close to a person's "guilt point" and they will switch.

>True, but that's a little like saying that the general principle "what goes up must come down" does not prove that if I throw this particular ball up, that it will come down. Perhaps not, but that's the way to bet.

This is a false analogy. People have been throwing things up into the air for quite a while now. Mass online distribution of a digital product is new territory.

>This is the "everyone is at heart a thief" hypothesis, which I choose to reject based on several decades living among these humans. I find that most of them are pretty decent. That's why I say that a Kazaa copy is not free. It has a psychological cost, at least to the person who is not by nature a thief. They know they're stealing. There is a non-zero cost to them every time they download a song. They may not even admit it... but it's there. So you don't really have to go to zero to beat Kazaa. You just have to get close to a person's "guilt point" and they will switch.

I don't think you understand what the new American morality is all about. I want it = I have a right to have it.