The online revolution has proved as damaging to independent labels as to multinational companies. How far do you agree?

Many voices in the music industry have claimed that internet piracy has reduced

sales of legitimate CDs and that illegal MP3 downloads have become a substitute

for legal CD purchases.

in CDs sales is due to the increasing and uncontrollable number of illegal copies

available using peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies.

Representatives of the music industry have claimed that the very existence of the industry is at

stake. Reinforcing copyright laws, by implementing technological protection and by actively

enforcing legal protection through lawsuits targeted at developers and users of P2P

networks.

Yet, defenders of online distribution technologies have argued that MP3

downloads offer a new way for consumers to try new music. By exposing internet

users to a larger variety of products, file-sharing technologies could allow them

to increase the set of albums they have a potential interest in, thus increasing

music sales.

In the news-breaking Napster case, the court found that the use of the file-sharing technology

harmed the music industry partly on the ground that illegal music download reduced legitimate

sales of CDs.