response 70 of 87:

Dec 1 07:10 UTC 2001

Illicitly *sold* CD-R's, or illicitly *copied* music?  So far as I know
most people buy CD-R's perfectly legally, then illegally *copy* the
music.  An even more interesting question, probably also missing from
those statistics, is how much of that represents actual "lost" sales? In
my case, I hope to get around to converting some of my CD's to MP3
format purely for my personal convenience.  That may be technically
illegal (although I think it's "fair use"); it's *certainly* not a lost
sale though - I bought those CD's, fair and square.

In what the record industry would probably argue is the more usual case,
that of someone downloading the MP3 ("for free"), the technology
*breaks* the fundemental assumption of the record industry.  That means
either (a) we somehow break the technology, or (b) the record industry
needs to adapt to the new market realities.  Unfortunately, (a) is
difficult or impossible to do in the long run.  The church, in the
middle ages, tried to get rid of guns when they first came out (another
example of new technology), and we all know how successful they were.
It doesn't sound to me like the record industry is working very hard to
do (b).