Your philosophy of relying on the goodness in people was tried with the shareware concept. It sort of worked at first. Many software authors got paid enough to be encouraged to keep writing. But gradually, more and more people experienced using a program but never sending in that required fee to the software's author, and each time they did that, the easier it got to not send in a donation for their next piece of great shareware.

Today there are only a few programs that still rely on shareware concept (WinZip is one). There's mostly freeware (best at: www.pricelessware.org) and there's time-limited demoware that stops working if you don't buy it after a month or so.

Rail against the unjustness of copying music for a friend if you like, but human nature doesn't recognize everything we recognize intellectually and morally. When Dick wants to impress Jane with his musical taste, he'll play mixes he's made himself and offer to make her a copy. When Harry asks to borrow a CD, Dick will loan it.

I'm pretty sure music copying cannot be prevented. On the other hand, slowing the mass distribution of copyrighted material to strangers seems easily possible. I'm not sure why governments haven't bothered. Small labels' income from their back catalogues will shrink for a while yet.

Although my parents always had good jobs, my dad had less than 400 vinyl records. That seemed to be enough. As kids, we knew the 10-15 that we liked really solidly. Most of today's young people are going to grow up with huge music collections. But I wonder if they'll appreciate music in the same way I did. And I wonder what music was for people who only knew it performed live and unamplified.

(written to Bill Morrisey's Standing Eight original CD).