I've defended peer-to-peer downloading of music before in these writings. This is just another formulation of some of my points.

• The music business is virtually medieval in its structures in the sense that those at the top accumulate all the wealth and power while the rest have nothing. I would be one such example. After thirty years in the business with accumulated knowledge and experience I can still hardly pay the rent. The music industry itself doesn't give a toss for me or the likes of me. It is concerned with exploiting ability such as mine in the pursuit of generating further wealth for its elite minority. So personally, I'm not sorry if by not paying for a particular download, Paul McCartney (Sir!) or Elton John (Sir!) or Mick Jagger (Sir!) are made marginally less rich.

• I think alternative methods of transaction and exchange need to be sought that don't have to involve money. These would be processes that move more in the direction of providing a social good. This would be defined by interactions that are to the mutual benefit of participants. So blind and brainwashed have we become by money and all it represents that other possible methods of transaction are never explored. This is not to deny the cleverness at the heart of the money system which on the whole is an invention of almost genius proportions, it is to say that it need not be the only means of transaction, and that by making it so, something essential is lost in human potential. Peer-to-peer is one such alternative form that subverts conventional systems of supply and transaction.

• I don't readily accept the concept of intellectual property. I think it a convention too far the idea that everything should be reduced to property. What may be fine for buildings and motor cars, for things that are spatially extended, stuff that can only be in one place at one time and can only be used by one person or a small specified group, doesn't have to apply to the arts. Creative work such as writings and music can be used and shared worldwide without imposing on anyone. The copyright system originally came about as a way of compensating talented people so they might continue to work. I say that it does that job very badly in the sense that only tiny numbers benefit in any substantial way. A better system would be one that allows more people to pursue a creative life. Intellectual property doesn't do it.