The success of Apple's 99 cents a throw music downloads (more than 200,000 on the first day) proves that people are prepared to pay for content even when free alternatives are available from the "peer-to-peer" black economy.
But don't draw the wrong conclusion from it. This is not a victory of consumers over producers. It is the reverse. Producers (the record companies) have regained the initiative thanks to Apple's innovative pricing mechanism. Record companies will now be able to charge almost as much per track as they do with CDs in the shops without having to lay out the huge expense of manufacturing them, packaging them, marketing them, dispatching them and transporting them.
Apple takes a cut of every sale, but there is no wholesaler or retailer with premises to maintain. Music companies are dis-intermediating (cutting out the middle men in the supply chain) while keeping nearly all the benefits for themselves.
This is brilliant for them while it lasts. But how long can it go on before new companies spring up, undercutting the media moguls? Or the artists themselves wake up to discover their new empowerment? The music companies are able to get away with it because they still own what they regard as the crown jewels (the contracts with the original artists) plus access to Apple's payment system.
But in future, artists would be better off dealing directly with Apple, or the legion of competitors who will undercut it, rather than with the music giants - especially for back catalogues. The only value that record companies can now add is publicity, because the distribution system has been taken from them. And there are plenty of specialist companies that can do publicity better than the record companies.
If the music companies have any sense, they will speedily drop the price of the downloads by well over 50% in order to deter all the new entrants that could undercut them.
The initial success of the 99 cents a track download serves only to emphasise what a runaway success really economic (ie cheap) downloads would be. The fact that people are already prepared to pay 99 cents for tracks they could easily get for nothing (admittedly at the cost of reduced quality and time consumed) shows what a law- abiding lot we are - as long as we don't feel we are being ripped off. I know someone who has been downloading tracks through Apple for 99 cents a piece even though he knows he has them lying around the house somewhere.
He finds it more convenient to do that than waste time looking for them. It is ironical that Apple unleashed its new system in the very week that a US district judge ruled that companies providing the software for peer-to-peer file sharing were not doing anything illegal.
But, instead of this leading to an explosion of free downloads, people suddenly started paying for them. The principle of unintended consequences could have no better memorial. And the revolution is only just starting.
