This is an interesting article and well worth a read
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100429/1503079244.shtmlOver in the UK, on Thursday evening, there was a music industry panel discussion that involved a massive number of panelists (ten -- which seems a bit too many) covering a wide variety of viewpoints from the music industry. Mostly they came from the traditional parts of the music industry, but the interesting participant was Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, aka brokep, from The Pirate Bay (and now Flattr), taking part in the discussion with a group of folks who regularly call him all sorts of unfriendly things. Stuart Dredge, over at Music Ally, ran a nice live blog of the conversation, which mostly went down about as you would expect. Dredge noted that it was mostly an "industry" audience, and he worried that "there’s a bit of a kick-the-Pirate-Bay mood bubbling" in the audience.
Thankfully, it doesn't look like things got that far. Mostly it was the typical back and forth. Industry folks whining that they can't compete with The Pirate Bay... even as they were talking about the variety of ways they were competing with The Pirate Bay. Basically, what becomes clear is they would prefer competition that they control, rather than competition that consumers drive. Tragically, innovation doesn't work that way.
This is the preferred method of debating matters of concern to all, often this important social step is missed and replaced with talk of lawsuits and other childish threats being made when many matters could simply be resolved by discussion. I'm pretty surprised that its taken this long for the recording industry to get around the table and listen to alternative points of view but its a start and perhaps in the future they will do so again rather than attempt to battle it out, we all know what happens anytime filesharers are threatened, they stand firm.
