Seriously, I downloaded every bit of music I could ever want years ago and now I buy songs one at a time (mostly) through iTunes because it's easy and cheap. Music piracy in its mass-orgy like form was based on one thing. Decades of being fucked by record labels and an opportunity to fuck them right back. It was about artists or people being too cheap to buy music. It was about people who had spent money on music for years and years with no real way of backing them up. I bought music over and over again as formats changed and as crappy cassette tapes broke. I probably bought Permanent Waves by Rush 5 times if I bought it once! Initially I was OK with CD's but I didn't get excited about them until I realized that I could rip them. Naturally after that came realizing I could share the files I'd ripped and suddenly my music collection became one with all my friends music collections. Sneaker-net kicked in and then later the network at my office followed by the Internet. I'm now squatting on around 400GB of music, much of which I'd never gotten around to sampling if a friend or co-worker hadn't had it in their collection. Good stuff. When it comes to "what has gone before" I'm like the fat guy in the restaurant in Monty Python's Meaning of Life. "Fuck off! I'm stuffed!". Now, going forward I will buy what I want at a price I think is fair and in the format I choose. That's what I call freedom (even if I had to violate a bunch of people's copyrights to get it)!