Firstly, great site.

Secondly – the “struggling” music business and copyrighting. The cost of a CD is about £0.2. A new CD sells in a shop for about £14 in the UK. The £13.80 difference is eaten up by distributors, retailers, advertising, marketing, branding, with a small bit going to the artistes themselves.

So, if people think they can save about £12 by taking music via P2P (assumption=still costs about £2 to burn your CD – price of CD, electricity, wear and tear, hassle etc) they will. Call it human nature, the laws of supply and demand, way of the world, whatever. The music businesses attempts to stop P2P are futile (someone will always come up with a new way of beating the system).

What they need to do (and are trying to avoid) is recognise that the market they are selling in has changed forever and adapt to this new environment. Adapt how – very simple. Cut their costs and hence CD prices to a level that the hassle involved in using P2P is no longer worth it for the average person – once this was done it would revert to being the small realm of techies and net geeks.

Similar things have happened in other industries due to the impact of technology and always have – the emergence of railways killed off the use of canals for freight transport, internet only banks have forced traditional banks to change their ways…..not to mention the whole cassettes and videotapes thing……