either 'I think Napster's great', said Bono on an MTV video, 'popstars like myself are vastly overpaid'. What false magnaminity from the mouth of the jumped up Gaelic-rock millionaire. If he was unsuccessful, impoverished and just starting out his views would be the same as Lars Ulrich, the uber-Napster enemy. Intellectual property is a public good, that's why it was created, to create the conditions for diversity and individual endeavour and creativity to flourish. If people don't get the reward and recognition for their artistic achievements(which means financial reward as well), the music won't happen. (except for purists like Belle and Sebastian, who don't mind keeping music amateur, and working part-time as Church Janitors a la Stuart - would like to see Bono doing that). or People will always have the same disposable income to spend on music, so people will access more music through Napster and the record industry will get the same money into its coffers somehow. This is good. Also, people will still desire the object. In the late 1920's when folk music was first put to acetate, it was assumed nobody would buy the music because it was there in the oral tradition around them. Until the Depression kicked in, shedloads (literally) of records were sold, because hicks, like all of us, are enamoured with the physical object - thus commodity fetishism was born and the record industry baptised. Personally, I feel the same desire. I can't help buying CDs on sale, even when I know I've got the tracks on my hardrive. As for becoming offended when 'hoity-toity' (presumably this is an American term, like valley girl) people deign to like the same music in public, that's an awful attitude. It's like music is a religious sect and they are false-believers or something. There's nothing wrong with elitism in musical preference, but everything wrong with intolerance. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+