I think that, regardless of the moral dillema created by services such as napster, the reality is
that they're here, and are going to stay here. Ever since it's conception it has seemed to me that
napster was a foreshadowing of the imminent death of the idea of "intellectual property" in the
conventional sense, and even more so since the birth of gnutella and other central serverless ptop
sharing networks. I'm not sure what this means for all the artists out there. For one thing, the
non-indie music labels are going to have to figure out that after tasting free music, people aren't
going to go back to paying 20$ a pop for cd's just because napster's gone. The people in the music
industry are going to have to make it worth it to the consumer to purchase the cd, and recieve
everything that goes along with it, case, sleeve etc. etc. Whether this is achieved by a lower price,
using dvd format to store more work, or whatever is for the industry at large to figure out.
As far as indie labels go, however, i hope most people on the list and elsewhere will realize that
the folks are not rich, they make music because they love to do it, and if you like their stuff, you
should always support them by PURCHASING an album(as painfull as that may be).
So.... whatever, take that as you will.
cdin
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