[AlanG]

8. "File sharing and burning is just like home taping, and that never killed the music sector."

File sharing via the internet cannot be likened to copying tapes deck to deck at home. That's like comparing someone physically copying a letter to a printing house churning out hundreds of copies a minute of the same letter - and then making it available to absolutely everyone around the world for free.
it can if you extend the analogy to the radio stations being the ones who share the music to vast numbers of people. A radio station broadcasts a track to 100people listening. These people run a tape and copy therefore the radio station has allowed 100 copies to be made. No different to Little Billy allowing 100people to download a track from him.

CD recordable (CD-R) copying is comparable to a home version of the high-speed mass production of CDs in factories. You could burn as many as 200 albums onto multiple CD-R discs in less time than it takes you to read this web page. It's cheaper too - 20 years ago the first CD manufacturing facility cost US$1bn. Now the same capability is available to home users for less than US$100.
technology gets cheaper, whats your point?

The damage this sort of copying causes to music is enormous. But it also presents other dangers to the unwitting consumer. If you use a peer-to-peer service, you open your computer and all the information you've stored in it up to hundreds of strangers - simply at the touch of a button. When you use a file-sharing service you may unwittingly be acting as a 'mass distributor'; as whenever you're online every other user around the world has the ability to access your hard drive. And this could lead to problems with your personal computer, including the transmission of viruses.
if you dont know what you are doing it can leave you open to virus attacks. As for allowing areas of your PC to be accessed by "every other user" surely thats the point of file sharing?

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9. "It's the record companies' fault for not getting their artists' tracks online quickly enough."

While it is very easy for anyone to upload an MP3 music file onto the net and give it away for nothing, what takes time is to do so in such a way that the online product is tracked through the process, with the artists, publishers, record companies, third party retailer all being paid their share of the price. The systems for doing this have had to be created from scratch and there have been complex negotiations between all the relevant parties in order to get the music licensed for digital sale.
seven years is quite long wouldnt you say?

Second, it is not true to say that record companies have not got their music online quickly enough. The music industry is far more advanced than any other in terms of producing its product for digital sale. What is true is that the appearance of the MP3 file format has meant that the music industry has been forced to grapple with issues of theft of intellectual property on the internet far sooner than other industries. Unlike most products where the internet is simply used to help sell the physical product, with music the virtual online copy is practically the same as the physical product.
wrong, their is no artwork and unless you cut out a chunk of your hard drive and store it in a box there is no "touchable physical product" either.

The speed with which the MP3 music file spread over the internet meant that as the music companies started to digitise their product, set up payment systems and invest in companies (some of which went bust in the early dotcom 'bubble') they were already in a situation where they were competing with free. And trying to compete against an over 99% pirate market on the internet is very difficult. Isn't it ridiculous to expect a record company who has to invest a huge amount in its artists to compete with a distributor who is giving music away? What high street bakery could survive the arrival of a competitor across the road who started giving away bread for free?
ah you mean like TESCO selling CDs as a loss leader, but then it increases sales for the record company while pulling in less money to then pass on to the artist per CD so you wouldnt want to make that comparison would you?