OK so what about the flip side?

When CDs came out they were almost always $14.99 to $18.99. At that same time, you could get almost anything you wanted on vinyl for about $7.99.

The CD industry basically promised that the prices would fall as soon as it caught on, but did they? No they stayed in the same price range, except for your regular over-print-cutout type CDs for less.

So, if the music industry had kept it's promise, and the cost of buying the whole CD was what it costs to by 3 songs on MP3, do you think the issue would be as great as it is now?

The music industry, knowing ahead of time that they would in reality have no control over people and technology to make copies of digital content, factored the price of piracy into the first CDs they put out along with ALL the rest of them since the 80s.

I say it's been a scam on the music industry side from the beginning and turnaround is fair play now. The problem is that it hurts the performer more than the record industry.