Hello Fritz, Saturday, November 30, 2002, you wrote: FF> But theoretically, the artist should get paid per listener. Or per FF> listening. With an intensity of listening experience factor. But there the FF> question arises: should the more intense listening be more expensive since FF> the listener gets more from the artist, or should it be cheaper as a FF> discount price, or to prevent misuse of inattentive listening? This is actually the strangest point of view I ever heard. Copyright laws are weird already and should be changed to be softer not harder. Why on earth somebody who writes or plays music, writes texts or acts in a movie should be paid by the number of sold copies or tickets? Nobody else except these categories of people are paid that way and that's why nobody else can become a billionaire just because he happened to have pretty face or managed to compose popular tune. Lets say I'm cleaning some path in the park, should I charge every person who passes this path some money? Even other sort of artists like sculptors or painters or architects are not paid that way. When the sculpture is sold, it is sold, that's it, no more money. People two hundred years ago didn't know anything about copyright so why should we use this thing? Can you imagine that somebody will start to claim their rights for Odyssey or even Bible? Obviously, my opinion about the subject doesn't mean that I don't care about the artists and copy whatever I can possibly find. In fact I'm buying lots of new and used CDs and copying and downloading sometimes the music which I wouldn't buy anyway. In case I like something which was copied or downloaded enough to have it for a long time, I buy it on a CD. And surely I prefer to buy music directly from the artists. And let me end with another issue. I happened to live in the countries where the price of one brand new CD would be equal to having dinner every day in a week. The price of five CDs might be the same as somebodies monthly salary. In that case how should I say to these people no when they ask me to copy one of CDs I have, or how should I blame them when they exchange music in MP3s? NP: David Gould "Adonai Dub" (CD) -- Best regards, Peter Gannushkin e-mail: shkin@shkin.com URL: http://www.downtownmusic.net/