The music industry should embrace unauthorized file sharing as a form of free marketing. - Inspired by Mike Masnick, Techdirt.

The music industry loses billions of dollars each year because of unauthorized downloads and file sharing. In 2007, the value of unlicensed music trafficked on P2P networks was pegged at $69 billion. Many industry insiders see this as having a massively negative impact on the music industry.

However, Mike Masnick of Techdirt, and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch both disagree. "If anything, you could flip this around and use it to show how much goodwill and free publicity provided by fans the industry squandered by trying to turn those fans into criminals, rather than learning to embrace that free labor in a business model that took advantage of all of that free promotion," writes Masnick.