Interestingly, despite all the hand wringing by the music industry pundits about how digital music downloads will bankrupt them, their revenues and profit margins are actually going up. I know myself that, when offered the ability to buy individual songs of my choice for a reasonable (I.E.: less than $1 per song) price, I buy more rather than less. I use the available search engines to find individual songs that I want to hear, and keep finding more. I just buy less crap by one particular artist in order to get individual songs I like.

I recall reading a summary of research showing that unauthorized duplication of music/video (E.G.: “sharing”) results in increased revenue instead of loss. The basic premise is that the vast majority of people who “illegally” copy are not actually lost revenue: they wouldn’t have paid for the content to begin with. But a healthy percentage of those who “steal” content ultimately go and buy more related content legitimately, if it’s available. Their interest in a particular musician or musical genre is piqued by something they download, and they go looking for a more complete set/higher quality recording. If they can find it in a format they want to use, they’ll generally pay for it.

The huge CD / DVD duplication companies do real damage to the copyright holders, and I don’t hesitate for a moment saying they should be hammered to the fullest extent of the law. But there is little evidence to support the premise that individuals do. It’s fair and reasonable for folks to be aware of how P2P software works, and to be conscious of the possible risks of using it.

But any time someone starts shouting “Think of the Children!” or “It supports the terrorists!”, I become…what is several orders of magnitude more than simply “skeptical”? 🙂