"Gig Giacona" wrote in message
But the radio station IS paying for it.

I thought it was the other way around (Payola). The station is used
as a promotion tool to push CD sales. Any kind of fee is a formality.

As for recording you are not getting
a digitly perfect copy as you are on a download.

The music you download isn't perfect either, its been compressed with
lossy algorithms. I know people that say they can hear the difference
on the typical "rip". Admittedly, the 10,000th person that shares it
is getting the same quality as the first. I'm waiting for the next
compression algorithm for video. There is so much interesting juice
left in that problem to be solved.

Hence it has never been
that popular of a way to get music and it certainly didn't replace the sales
of records.

Back in the day I had all kinds of cassette tapes. Some bands
actually embrace the idea and take that approach as a way to build
fans and sell concert tickets (Phish).

Remember the big stink with home taping when the VCR came out. They
wanted to make it against the law. "Oh, they'll zip past the
commercials. Thats stealing from us because our advertisers aren't
getting their products shown." Now its just a distant memory. We
lived through that, and we'll live through this.

I thought it was the other way around (Payola). The station is used
as a promotion tool.

As far as the hammer is concerned if you have a way that both you and the
person or 10,000,000 people you lend it to can use it at the same time I'm
sure they will come up with a

UNENFORCEABLE licencing agreement for the product.

Let me ask you this. Is there a price that the record industry could set
that you would then say that "Hey, I don''t need to pirate music anymore."?

Depends on what your time is worth. If you're a teenager with a $10
month allowance, it ain't much.