[throwawaykf05]

>But music sharing didn't kill the industry then; there's little reason to believe it'll be the reason for its death now.

Not a valid extrapolation. The Internet is billions of times faster and more densely connected than the sneakernet.

[lostcolony]

Of course it's faster and more densely connected. And? Extrapolating that because people shared before, and now they can share BETTER, to "the music industry is doomed" (or whatever statement you care to make), is what is 'not a valid extrapolation'. I wasn't extrapolating anything, just saying "this is not a new behavior", and given no other data, the fact of that behavior is not in and of itself a death knell.

[throwawaykf05]

You said:

> Sure. But music sharing didn't kill the industry then; there's little reason to believe it'll be the reason for its death now.

To me that translated to: "Sharing some songs between a handful of friends once every few days didn't harm the music industry; hence being able to share hundreds of songs with millions of people in a few seconds will harm it now."

The second statement sure looks like an extrapolation from the first, and given the mind-boggling difference in scale, an invalid one.

As for lack of data, music industry revenues have been decimated since the turn of the industry. Sure, there are several factors involved, but can you really pretend the terabytes of copyrighted music being torrented every month has nothing to do with it?