Stephen Downes

I do not want musicians to suffer, and neither does anyone I know. But the industry needs to understand that we share the music they create, that we have always shared the music they create, and that this is how we discover new music that they create. The other thing the music industry needs to understand is that we are not willing to buy the same song over and over again just because we get a new iPod, or because a new storage format comes out.

But (largely because of sharing) we are much more willing to go to concerts and we're much more willing to buy into (reasonably priced) online services. And the music industry, in Canada, earns more now than it ever did. Government, I think, needs to understand this. As Dwayne Winseck writes, "Picking up where the last Parliament left off will deliver important advances with respect to user created content and limited liability for ISPs. However, the crackdown on users, attempts to turn ISPs into ‘gatekeepers' on behalf of the music industry and permitting digital locks to trump people's rights, will lead us down a bad path.