New attitudes towards filesharing

The Register doesn’t think much of the idea of paying filesharers for distributing music, but filesharers are contributing a valuable resource to artists. Bandwidth costs money, and people who share music are giving artists a slice of their upload speed. Now, it does seem a bit odd as an idea, but sometimes a person who decides to continue to seed is doing so because they’re a real fan of the artist, and they’re making it possible for others to gain access to the music. This doesn’t help much in the current system - where piracy means less sales - but for artists who embrace the ideals of Karmafan it means that their work is being distributed for free. So maybe it’s not such a crazy idea that filesharers will eventually get something back for sharing the things they like.