But for those who really care about music, the most chilling trend is how people treat the music in mp3s like nothing more than a bunch of data. Rather than caring about quality, the actual music at hand, the direction the artist took in relation to their last album, people are bragging about how many gigs they have, how nicely they arranged their directories, how many servers they have passwords for, etc. Second, if you're into Mp3s, you're probably running a Microsoft operating system. Microsoft OSs have a tendency to crash for no reason, so your listening enjoyment is going to be interrupted at least 3 times a day. 6 if you actually try to DO anything.
Record companies hear what's going on, and act accordingly.
Rather than trying to outlaw mp3s or make cds copy protected, record companies are hard at work on making mp3s of their own. Nobody is going to pay to download music. That's the reason mp3s caught on in the first place. Somebody will get a copy of the file somewhere, post it on an ftp site, and things will go along just like they did before. Albums are an important part of an artist's expression.