So, with the fairly recent news that Limewire losing a court case and being almost forced to shut down, I was wondering what you all think about file sharing/p2p sites.
(http://www.helium.com/items/1835334-limewire-likely-to-shut-down-in-summer-of-2010)
Personally I think the main reason people steal music is that it costs too much. Even if all mp3 songs were 50p each, to fill an 8GB iGarbage nano completely legally, it would cost £1000. For young people, that's almost impossible (It would be almost 1/4 of the wage for a 16-17 year old in the UK). For adults, it's a good portion of a years salary.
If music was less expensive, more people would buy it. The 'worst' affected artists (those who get music 'stolen' more than others) are those who already earn millions of pounds anyway, add on the extortionate price of band tickets and merchandise and they're already rolling in your money.
I buy a CD or two from each artist occationally to support them (I don't like the **** they put in the charts so most of the bands I listen to need the money) but I still listen to the mp3 I got illegally. For most people, if they literally could not get the music for free, they would not get it at all (or would either have very little music in their collections or would solely rely on YouTube etc for it) So the notion that illegal downloading is damaging the music industry is ignorant and largely false.
For those who disagree with file sharing, what about for artists that are dead? Surely they aren't paticularly in need of it when they're six feet under.
Discuss.
sXe