Music publishing is thriving - in part because a share of live music revenues generated in the form of copyright fees, go to the publishers (ironically, the largest of these beneficiaries are owned by the same corporations which own the suffering and complaining record companies)

4) The generation of traffic is the most important need for firms that invest in and operate digital networks. Closing down Napster functioned as a sudden arctic cold shower for the telco industry. By and by, new forms of more decentralised file sharing applications became available, ones where the actual content which is swapped is harder to track.

It would have been much better for both the content and the telecom industries to have come to a revenue sharing agreement re incomes from P2P activities (even encouraging growth of P2P activities) than to close down services, dismissing them as "illegal".

5) The "legal" downloading services which have not been controlled by the major record companies, have not been able to compete with the likes of Kazaa and Morpheus, not so much because of price or quality/reliability, but because they cannot offer the same range of choice.

The record industry's own comparative offerings (PressPlay and Musicnet), though launched in 2001, are still not available in Europe, and have only a scattering of subscribers in the USA.

6) These observations are extremely important in the context of the move to 3G mobile networks. If the varying interests of operators, content owners and consumers are not accepted by all parties. If compromises are not reached, then the development of 3G entertainment services could be severely hampered. No operator will wish to end up in the courts as an alternative to suing Napster or Kazaa. Read the whole darn thing.