So..to repeat what everyone already knew… RIAA’s lawsuits are bullshit..

its not that the illegal downloading/”sharing” of music is what’s causing CD sales to plummet… its the fact that the music on the CD sucks, the CD prices are the same now that they were 5 years ago even though production costs for the cds have never been lower (IIRC, its something like 4-5 pennies in actual manufacturing costs for each CD)…. so while RIAA keeps preaching that the downloads are bad for the industry… according to this CNET article the song swapping may actually encourage people to go out and buy the whole CD, since they have the chance to listen to the whole thing, and know that there is more then one good song on it. The study referenced in this article found that it takes about 5000 downloads to prevent the sale of ONE CD…. I’m not condoning the actual stealing of music… but I do think that ‘try it before you buy it’ is a good business model for the music industry.. .after all.. you test drive your cars before you buy them don’t you?