I have always felt that the dammages claimed by the record industry are massively exagerated in any case. They frequently claim that every download represents a sale which is simply not the case. If you are paying for music you are likely to only want to spend money on stuff you particularly like. If you are downloading for free you are more likely to grab a lot of stuff of only passing interest that you would never have been willing to pay for,. The reccord industry may have a problem, but I do not believe it is the fault of the illegal file sharers. Statistics show that people are very willing to spend money on entertainment and if anything the ammount they are spending is higher now ever. The catch is that while a few years ago all that money may have gone to the Record companies, now a lot of it goes on buying DVDs and video games. People only have so much to spend, so with a greater range of things to spend money on it is inevitable that the record industry is going to see its sales going down.