"Panel discusses file sharing, copyright laws," April 15 article.

Dear file sharing, Kazaa/former direct-connect using student body of Penn State: Despite what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) would have you believe, the music industry is not losing vast amounts of money due to mp3s. In fact, when Napster was rampant, the industry had an increase in sales (www.boycott-riaa.com).

The recent decline in the music market could be due to a number of factors: a general decline in the economy, lack of interest in the music, or most likely the RIAA is fudging the numbers to persuade Congress to pass laws that persecute music downloaders.

However, remember the artists! If you download a song and like it, think about supporting them in some way. Go to concerts, or pay the artist directly at www.musiclink.com. Remember, many artists that sell millions of CDs end up actually owing their label money (www.negativland.com/albini).

Also, I would like to offer my condolences to Mike's Music. Improper management, not file-sharing, certainly brought the demise of the store. Other stores, such as City Lights and Arboria Records, should be out of business by now if file-sharing truly deprives stores of that amount of business. In reality, mass market pop music is suffering the most. Independent artists, most all of which support the right to download music, are doing extremely well as of late. The music landscape is shifting from the packaged platinum artist to a plethora of modestly popular artists. And this, folks, is the real reason for all of the commotion on this topic.