Well it seems the predictions by the music industry of devastation caused by ‘illegal’ burning of songs onto CD have come to naught. Research suggests that tens of millions of home made CDs were given as gifts to Australians in 2003. Yet record sales are hardly showing a blip. “In Australia CD sales through stores rebounded 5 per cent in the first half of 2003. “

And in the USA, one of the loudest prophets of music industry annihilation Stan Liebowitz has recanted. The industry loved Stan when he proclaimed “large-scale unauthorised copying could soon make it obsolete”.

Stan now says “given the enormity of the whole MP3 download enterprise it should be easy to recognise its impact on album sales if the impact is large”.