i really think that the money aspect is not a factor in the big picture at all, i think the key is appreciation of the material that was created. if i download a song that a record company 'owns' and i love it then i am already compensating or 'giving back' to the artist in a way that is far more important than allowing a few cents per song to trickle down to them. an indy artist might be better served having additional merchandise for their fans to buy rather than relying on a medium that is so easy to pirate. it's a lot harder to pirate a t-shirt than a song these days. many bands, mine included, give their music away for free. if intellectual property has a monetary value then the record companies should replace our obsolete vinyl records and cassettes with whatever the modern medium is, or at least allow us to do so without squawking. essentially , if you've paid for a song at any time in your life then you bought a de facto license to enjoy that song not just to enjoy that song on a particular medium, so if your cassette gets chewed up and you download an mp3 it's all part of the de facto license. however the corporate slant is that if your cassette gets chewed up you're screwed and legally have to buy another in order to enjoy the music again, right? who decided that? not any of us, and most likely the majority of artists wouldn't be so greedy as to make a fan pay more than once for the same song. sorry if the corporate mechanism suffers and ceasar isn't rendered unto, but that's my free will and the general consensus of the modern world is that music, once exposed to the public, becomes part of the public domain but the artist is basically expected to capitalize on the fame generated by the content. look at the girls playing mandolin and ukes etc on youtube, they get thousands of fans and are giving you entertainment, for free, and cashing in on the fame without record companies in the middle. it's a whole new system of music, even with rampant mp3 downloading, new talent still emerges and inspires. the people who suffer are those who refuse to accept that the times have changed and cling to antiquated rules that were the norm 20 yrs ago. i think our main man dw needs to get a little more creative on his revenue generating rather than clinging to rules that are becoming more plastic. simply selling mp3's and sticking to the 'morals' of old fashioned laws looks like a system that will eventually fail in a monetary way. i will not pirate the mp3's i purchased from david, but i find myself thinking that it's selfish of us to essentially 'withhold' the information in those mp3's from the public.