Researchers at the BI Norwegian School of Management found that folks who illegally download music also purchase as much as ten times as much music as people who don't. While they occasionally buy CDs, they're very prone to downloading individual songs on legit digital download services like iTunes or Amazon MP3. Does this shock you? When asked about this survey, a record industry exec was skeptical.

Advocates of internet music piracy love to cite these studies as a justification for the whole file-sharing movement, and now is a good time to seek encouragement, seeing as how some of the top figures in said movement are headed to jail in Sweden for aiding copyright infringement.

The problem is that while there is a correlation here, there's probably not a causation. It seems unlikely that music pirates buy more music because they're getting it for free. Rather, it would seem that people who love music get more of it any way they can. If you only buy two or three albums a year, piracy is probably more trouble than it's worth. On the other hand, if you feel like you need to acquire 200 new songs to listen to each month, both legal digital downloads and piracy are likely to be part of your day-to-day routine.

Some folks have more radical ideas, though.

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