Although entirely too long, Salon.com Technology | Embrace file-sharing, or die, by John Snyder and Ben Snyder, is worth reading, or at least skimming. At a bare minimum, read the Thomas Jefferson quote.

Ever since the demise of Napster, I have not downloaded music from the Internet (except for a few isolated cases) and, in that period, I have purchased perhaps one CD. Prior to that, I was downloading music and buying CDs of stuff that I liked. Clearly, I’m not an isolated example of this, but this link between hearing a song and buying a CD is just as obvious as it at first seemed to me. I’m somewhat at a loss to see how the RIAA does not see this. I think that it is, perhaps, a generational thing, and the folks that are currently in control just can’t bring themselves to make that jump. While it is possible that the next generation of leaders will make this step, the current lack of movement would seem to doom the RIAA to forever be one generation behind the curve.