Here’s the quote where Reuters loses all credibility:

"The industry blames the extensive online trade of free music for contributing to a massive slide in recorded music sales. A year ago it launched a multi-pronged effort to promote sanctioned online music stores such as Apple Computer Corp’s iTunes while suing those who share their music collection with others on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks such as Kazaa and WinMX."

And what "sanctioned online music stores" available in Europe are you talking about exactly? Rhapsody is a US-only service. Napster launched only last month in the UK and is not available anywhere on the continent itself. Itunes is only going to be launched later this month, and it remains to be seen where the service will be available. A couple others like Emusic might let European consumers in (I think I tried it a couple of years ago), but they’re most likely to disregard European privacy laws, are labelled in English and use US dollars. Here we are in mid-2004 and there are no decent "sanctioned online music stores" available to European consumers in their language, currency, and compatible with their laws. Apparently this industry considers the European consumer deserves obsolete CDs, shitty ringtones, and nothing else, and they dare to complain! That’s possible only because European politicans looking into those issues literally sleep with the majors.
Reuters, your "reporting" is garbage.