music away for free (using licenses other than copyright). In the absence of any examples of financial success with this method, we have to assume these people are hobbyists (with some other form of income). * Many of the companies responsible for quality control of copyright works (label, promo, distro, stores etc) will cease to be without copyright. * The new quality control filters are in their infancy. You mention pandora as an example - that's one of the better ones in my opinion. They basically pay a bunch of people to listen to tracks and score them on a load of criteria. That sounds like a huge task. The tracks they work with are those that have already filtered through the record labels. Imagine how much bigger their task would be if they had to listen to and grade every half-finished track that someone made in their bedroom then uploaded to soundcloud! So with those things in mind, I think it's fair to conclude that: abolishing copyright before other systems that do not rely on copyright have developed to a point of offering similar quality control is likely to lead to a decrease in the quality of the music that the public hear. Do you agree with that? On a side note, I keep reading this term "copyright maximalist" on this blog. I'm not quite sure I get its meaning and I'm not sure if the above is making me sound like one of those! I am thinking about