on the other hand i think wiki is in fact a place where communism can work. we can all produce something and share it with everyone else.
The music distributing industry, however, might suffer sales loss. I don't mind. And there is research to support the idea that music sharing does not reduces sales, so that's another argument pro music sharing. PDF
That leaves us with the selected few that do earn incredible amounts of money with the current system. To be honest, I don't want to support these superstars, either. I don't believe their music to be as valuable as the renumeration they are getting.
When distributing music is a valuable service, as it must have been a few years ago, I would gladly pay for that service. Now that I find cheaper alternatives, the music distributing industry is trying to prevent me from using them.
Therefore, if we assume that most musicians don't get any money for their record sales today, I have no problem with the copying and sharing of music. In fact, the law should be changed to reflect this.
I share this assumption based on my talks with the very few musicians I know.
note that none of this supports the record industry, which IMO is a bunch of dickwads who've been getting rich on all of our backs. i am also not saying anything against music sharing per se. i think it's fine. i don't want to make it illegal. i download mp3s like the rest of ya, to check out music i haven't heard yet, and i share quite a bit of music by lesser-known artists to allow others to find out about them.
but i also don't support ripping off artists. just because one can doesn't mean i consider it ethical. there are alternatives. and i hope they're gonna win over this stupid attitude on both ends of the spectrum, the record industry and the pirates; i care about neither of them. after listening to napstered music, i go and buy the CD if i like it. i've got an emusic account. i am all in favour of micropayments for individual songs.
anyway, we were talking about communism. napster is still not a good example thereof. 
And yes, just as FreeSoftware has nothing to do with communism, file sharing does not, either. 
You have the music downloaded and if you like it you go buy the CD? You can burn a cd from the file. It sounds the same as the one in trade. My proposal: instead of making a gift to dubious companies why not send the artists a dollar? Maybe they have email? If not write a postcard to the record company to get you in touch with the musiscians. The adress of the record company is on the backsleeve of the cd. Copy it from there. It's a good reason to go to a recond shop too by the way. Copying adresses is even legal as far as I know. Depends on any f****** license I guess.
I grew up in West-Berlin. "Inside" the iron curtain. Not left, not right from it. Communism, or better the stuff they did right of the curtain "worked" somehow, "existed", whatever as long as there was this iron curtain. Napster, Skype, eMule, blogs, wiki, the stuff we do here has no location. It's everywhere. Like measels. There is no left and right of it. Right/left - nowhere/everywhere. A question of Zauber.
Mattis -- you don't know where i buy the CD.
i buy some number of CDs directly from artists, or small distributors who have what i consider a fair agreement with their artists. i buy some songs online, where that is possible, and burn my own. i still buy some in record stores, however, because there's a limit to how much time i have to track down individual artists. tell me the truth, do you actually write a postcard to every artist whose music you listen to, so you can send them a dollar? artists need to find ways to make this easier for listeners. some do, and whenever i find something like that, i distribute the link. that's not all i could do, but all i am willing to do at this time. if you have addresses of artists, maybe you could make a wiki page listing them, to help others find them more easily? maybe we need a musician's wiki?
