<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="FIXED" FACE="Courier New Baltic" LANG="0">First of all, I'm not one to really support the music industry's claim that internet downloading is responsible for a drop in sales. I feel it's a poor excuse to cover up the "No one's buying what we're selling...but it CAN'T be because we're selling garbage - let's blame file sharing!"<BR>
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I acknowledge there are people who abuse it and who perhaps have stopped buying new music all together and that's unfortunate, but honestly the music industry ignores such factors as absurdly high and increasing prices they're charging for sub-par products. I mean, c'mon, "Pop Star A" releases an album with 2 singles and terrible filler and then they sell it for $18 at the local mall. It's not the $60,000-a-year man or woman that's gobbling up these releases - it's the no job, allowance only 12 year-old. Said 12 y.o. goes to the mall, blows $18 on 2 singles and filler, comes home and is let-down by the expensive album of filler they just wasted money on. "Next time," they reason, "it'll be better to download it."<BR>
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And by the way, how many of us here are sending these emails for free? Aren't we all taking valuable money away from the USPS? That's an industry that's been hit hard by the expansion of the internet, but nary a mention of that in these file-sharing emails. Perhaps we should move the Groop webchain to the good ol' pen and page.<BR>
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-seth-</FONT></HTML>