File Sharing? No.

OK.

So the RIAA has been issuing lawsuits faster than George W. spits lies. And towards what? Users of P2P, or peer-to-peer, networks. They claim that the "rampant downloading of free music is damaging" to their bottom line, and that the "blantant stealing causes CD prices to go up as a result".

Let me tell you something.

I've been paying $18 for a CD (not including tax) for as long as I can remember. The part about increasing prices is a crock. Recent studies also have shown that, in fact, p2p can help sales. How? Look at the facts:

- the RIAA says that everyone who downloads music off of the net is yet another consumer who's not paying for the music. However, studies show that these same people are, for the most part, not financially inclined. They're the kids with allowances, highschoolers with lunch money, etc. They're not your working stiffs. That's not to say there aren't working stiffs that p2p. It's saying that they're the minority. That means that the minority are the losses to the artists, and truth be told, with the price gouging that CDs endure, they make more than enough to compensate.

- the RIAA says that people like to go online and download whole CD's of music. This isn't true, because anything transmitted over the internet, even with the fastest of connectons, is not near as good quality as the physical copy. A lot of people use p2p to sample music -OR- to get a single - something a lot of stores stopped selling. The thing is, if people get a chance to hear one or a few songs from an artist that they end up enjoying, they WILL buy the person's album: one, because they're impatient to wait for it to download; two, because there's no guarantee it won't be a corrupted file (and most people don't have the patience), and 3, they want to get the best possible quality. They'll buy it.

- the RIAA says that p2p is stealing. It's not. It's sampling music and I'll tell you truthfully - I would welcome p2p to anyone, because it means people actually get a chance to hear my music, and maybe even find songs that they enjoy that didn't get air play. That's sales for me.

- the RIAA says that MP3 files should be outlawed, and songs not be able to be burned to CD due to the rampant burning and selling. It's so hard to find a good quality version nowadays that it's more time effective to just go buy it.