[discostu]

So put one on the table.

Actually this discussion that you and I are having is copyright law. If you want to switch I'm perfectly willing to switch but there are those that participate in these discussions (and I'm not pointing fingers or saying anything about you) that try to use the large ball approach to transfer "victory", ie if I agree that the RIAA is by and large rotten bastards they try to indicate I no longer agree with the basic concept of copyright law. That's why I like to put a clear deliniation in.

[visualops]

Actually there was a guy on TV just the other day discussing this very thing. I believe he was with Grokster. He had several ideas, which his company had approached the RIAA with, only to be shooed away.
I'm in a different line of work, and certainly don't claim to have all the answers. I would like to be able to, as an example, go into a music store and mix a professional quality CD from a master list. Or, sit at my computer and download a variety of tunes for a few cents each to burn my own CDs. etc etc
This was written in 2000:
The lesson for the RIAA here is that old distribution models can fail long before
anyone has any idea what the new models will look like. As with digital text, so now
with music. People have a strong preference for making unlimited perfect copies of the
music they want to hear. Napster now makes it feasible to do so in just the way the Web
made it possible with text. Right now, no one knows how musicians will be rewarded in
the future. But the lack of immediate alternatives doesn't change the fact that Napster
is the death knell for the current music distribution system. The music industry does
not need to know how musicians will be rewarded when this new system takes hold to know that musicians will be rewarded somehow. Society can't exist without artists; it can, however, exist without A&R departments.