Here’s the question, what percentage of the undoubted shedloads of illegally downloaded lps that are currently sitting on your hard drive would you go out and pay money for if, in some M F Global of the music world, the Industry could just reach into your computer and remove them all. And how much would you be prepared to pay to have legitimate MP3s of the stuff you would keep. Let’s imagine here that everything ever recorded wasn’t also on youtube. If you don’t buy it you will never hear it again.

Now for me I reckon I could happily live without 80 percent of what I have downloaded over the years, maybe 90. And I bet that applies to almost everyone. So I might pay for ten percent of my current crop, but I wouldn’t pay much. I massively over consume out of vague interest and boredom, if it wasn’t free I wouldn’t buy it. Is that an argument for the continued violation of copyright etc, no, but equally, to be frank, if it all suddenly stopped tomorrow would my life be substantially worse? Would I  experience deprivation. No.

So there may well be other issues of corporate etc control of the Internet that are worth fighting, but as a user, as a music consumer my attitude is basically so what ? either way.