Am I a Music Pirate???? (No. 25)

I have a program on my laptop at home that makes it easy to burn from one cd to another, to save to to my computer or a mp3 player (if I owned one).

I think that musicians can see both benefits and losses when they share their music online. Songs that are really great and that touch people can take off like wildfire by word of mouth (or typing of fingers), songs that people don't like aren't going to sell. Then there are hackers and general creeps who will cheat and find ways to get around buying the music and just downloading it. Of course, they do the same things now with CDs, movies and videos. Regardless of rules and consequences, there are going to be people who bend the rules if not flat out breaking them.

Strict versus open? I believe that rules should be flexible and if penalties must be paid, they should be reasonable. I think that being willing to listen to the consumer is the best way to go. (Speaking as a consumer, I guess I might be biased.)