" No one seems to mention the legalized theft which goes on daily for all peoples purchasing CDs. A CD cost probably less than a dollar to create, yet sells for 15.00 (out right robbery) of society as a whole (of course this is in my opinion)."

I would be hard pressed to challange any of your other statements as they gracefully highlight ligitimate aspects of the whole problem.

I would however expand on your above comments. The same thing happens in terms of computing technology. The myth about the prices of technology going down. They don't go down they stay the same. The technology changes.

Does anybody remember when a 486 cost around $2,200?

Consider the purchase history of a single pc buyer attempting to keep up with the latest and greatest pc technology.

This problem is exaggerated by a consumer that does not take advantage of the advanced features offered by the newest pc offering.

So let's say that for a five year period the latest and greatest pc of each respective year costs between $1000 - $1500. This customer upgrades his or her computing technology during each of these cycles. Now mind you that many people don't outgrow their computing needs they simply buy into the hype of new technology.

So the cost to this consumer is apx between $5,000 - $7,500 for the same computing functionality.

Now, your above average technology users tends to purchase technology based on the computing needs. So outgrowing technology occurs at a much slower pace if at all depending on the technology.

So that everyone's clear about what I'm suggesting. For people who use apx 20% of the technology available to them the cost of keeping up is painfully expensive.

So the story goes... Most people including myself have purchased music CDs for only one or two songs (The rest of the cd-I didn't like.) In cases such as these I paid a high price for a couple of tracks off of a twenty song CD. This is not a new problem for the music industry it goes all the way back to LPs and perhaps even beyond. (The industry needs to effectively address this.)

Alternatively, It would be unfair not to mention the times I've purchased a CD for a single song and discovered that I liked the whole CD. This was good because many of the tracks were not in circulation on the air-wave.