And mobile?
The real game in town is not online. It's a skirmish. The real game is mobile phones. If your mobile phone is a portable computer, which has got all the facilities of an iPod and a radio, and a TV, with some limits on their memory but as time goes it'll have huge memory. But you need access to everything.

I agree with Jenner that the music labels have “raped their own business model” and are in a very difficult situation. The projections that CD sales will decline by 50% over the next few years sound about right to me, given the alternatives that people have online.

But I do not think that the government should step in and help these people. I do not think that we should legislate a tax on broadband Internet access and mobile phones that gives the music industry guaranteed revenue, and guaranteed profits, while simultaneously removing their incentive to innovate and serve niche markets.

Asking the government to prop up a dying industry is always (always) a bad idea. In this case, it is a monumentally stupid, dangerous, and bad idea.