[Dean Roddey]

The reason this poll is meaningless is because illegal file sharing itself is not the problem, but the abuse of it by people. Putting bullets in a gun won't kill anyone, someone has to pull the trigger. So you get people saying, well I only download for preview. Of course if that were true on a broad scale, we wouldn't be in the position we are in. The real problem is people benefiting from intellectual property without paying for it.

The semanticists can point out that I can download a thousand files a day and never do anything but delete them, and nothing has changed. They can claim that the vast bulk of songs downloaded are discarded. But of course we know that the vast bulk of songs downloaded are the most popular ones, which means that the people downloading them specifically were looking for them and almost certainly already knew they wanted to have them.

So the fact that you downloaded the first hit by the 13th Floor Elevators and decided you didn't want to keep it is pretty irrelevant to the music business. The problem is people downloading specifically what they know they want, because they know it's a very popular song, and they've already heard it. Those are the songs the music business makes it money on, and the fact that those are also the most stolen makes the damage that much worse.