My thoughts on it is this:
The industries are ran by stuffy old men that have no concept of technology, let alone application of.
Items they have said would kill their industry include:
tape recorders (Cassette, and possibly reel-to-reel)
VCRs (Both Betamax and VHS)
MP3
DiVX
....so far I haven't seen this...actually I've seen industry supporrt to some level for all of these.
Basically they just get all butt-hurt when they aren't the first to come out with anyhting, which is constantly since they are as innovative as a tree is hostile.
Does it have an affect: yes.
Is it destroying their industry: mixed bag...they lost money on that album sale...but that lost sale may have influenced someone else hearing the pirate copy to go buy it...or better yet go to the muscian's concert, and bought concert schwag....of course it hurts the recording execs...but as far as hurting the artist I would say most likely no, since they make most of their money through the concert circuit.
Plus isn't it odd when Napster came out, the record industry was showing their greatest profits ever...then when they started fighting file sharing, their profits went down? Sometimes things can't be thought of as black and white...to me Napster was free publicity...I could get a few crappy MP3s of a prostective album...if I liked it, go buy it. That was also when i didn't have the cash to buy tons of CDs, so it really mattered to me.
Now....well it still matters to me since I hate buying crap, but I won't use P2P since they are still crying over it....and thus I don't buy more than 2-3CDs a year. Oh well, their loss... I'll just listen to my old stuff
