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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bendris Noulg" data-source="post: 1533844" data-attributes="member: 6398">Well, I did some filesharing back in the late 90's (I learned of it because it was becoming an issue, then I stopped doing it because the issue was too convoluted).  I will say that during that short bit, I learned of nearly 2 dozen bands that I had never heard of; I learned of them mostly because they had done covers of songs I was looking for.  At any rate, I ended up buying at least one album from many of them, and some of them I became a fan of and bought all of their albums. Now, is this a "standard"?  Ideally, it would be.  It's presumably a primary defense/justification that many of these programs are put online for.  But to be honest, I don't think it is the standard.  Such a standard would, I believe, paint the world in brighter colors than it really is. Of course, I've seen this from the other side, as well.  For instance, I've bought several copies of Metallica's Ride the Lightning.  Two cassettes, both eaten, one vinyl, destroyed at a batchelor party, and two CDs, one stolen and the other scratched up by my idiot brother.  So here I am, a person that has bought the album 5 times, but without a single copy.  So I download 3-4 of the songs from that album that I really really really liked.  But then I turn on the news and here I've got Lars the Whiney pouting over how Napster deprives him of his due earnings and that everyone using it are thieves. Sorry, Lars, but I done paid you 5 times for your work.  I've earned it. Yeah, but if you paid any attention to the UA-SRD thread, you saw how even that rubs some folks the wrong way, with several people (including Andy Collins) comparing this "perfectly legal way" to filesharing, suggesting that it amounts to the same thing.</blockquote>

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