We ran a substantial portion of attorney and P2P advocate Philip Corwin's exceptional testimony before the California Senate Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry. Other testimony yesterday was equally explosive:

Free peer-to-peer music file-sharing has become larger than the multibillion-dollar recording industry, with a growth trend that has become "fundamentally unstoppable," a state Senate committee exploring Internet piracy has been warned.

The free downloading habit among 61 million Americans and millions more worldwide is "cemented," with only 9 percent of U.S. downloaders believing they are doing anything wrong, media analyst Eric Garland told California lawmakers Thursday.

"We see only one trend," said Garland, founder of Beverly Hills-based Big Champagne, which analyzes Internet trends. "More people are downloading more copyrighted material."

Even as the Senate Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry debated an issue bedeviling a powerful music and film industry that employs thousands of Californians, more than 4.2 million people worldwide were downloading files on the Australia-based file-sharing giant, Kazaa.

Instead of fighting the trend, which he called a losing battle, Garland said the entertainment industry should embrace digital distribution rather than file lawsuits that only make more people aware of free downloads. [Washington Post]