The big record companies have brought this on themselves. They have tried for too long to force-feed people a limited and pathetic range of music, maximising profits whilst claiming how innovative they are. Those who feel sorry for the big record companies need to think again; the recording artist typically takes only 5% of the gross price of a CD sold. Where does the rest go? Into marketing (to force-feed people even more rubbish through MTV etc., to bribing radio stations to play, non-stop, the latest 10 tunes from their catalogue of "new releases", enormous salaries and profits.
IF one has the curiosity to venture into a less mainstream form of music (e.g. modern jazz or classical) -something increasingly rare these days!- then one quickly finds how poor the choice of albums is. There are many albums which I would happily buy (at a reasonable price) but simply cannot because rereleasing them is not a priority. Finally-why have the big labels STILL not offered high-qlty downloads?

Rob, Paris, France

The Government negotiated a new contract with agreed opening hours. Prior to 2004, Saturday morning opening was for urgent problems not routine appointments.
I am in my late 40's and have been a GP for over 20 years. My working days are now longer, more intense and much more complex, than at any stage in my career. Am I paid well? Yes I am and so I should be. I take a huge amount of responsibility and manage uncertainty in most contacts I have with patients.
GPs are happy to have a debate about what the Government wants, but we also care about what our patients want. I ask you as a patient, do you want traditional family doctors, where you are registered, you have a choice of seeing a GP who you know and trust or do you want a supermarket approach to your health and that of your family?There is poor general practice in this country that is not responsive to patients, this is unacceptable and the Government, GPs and patients should work together to improve this.

Dr Nigel Watson, New Milton, Hants

I have used both allofmp3 and now mp3sparks for several years, they offer what other download sites do not, decent quality music in any format you want, at a sensible price.
No other site gives you a choice of MP3 at any rate between 128 and near CD quality 320, or completely lossless downloads ( as good as the CD itself).
If the major record companies started a service whereby we could download high quality tracks for a similar fee to that of allofmp3/mp3sparks, the take up would be phenominal, and I'm certain it would be a major income earner.
As it is, tracks in inferior quality encoding, with digital rights management (in many cases) are sold at between 70p to £1.00, making a downloaded album cost the same as going and buying a physical copy! Sorry, no contest.
The vast majority of my 55,000 tracks have not cost the industry anything, as had I not been able to buy them cheaply, and trade with others across the world, I would certainly not gone out and bought most of them.

Robert Hitchcock, Redditch, Worcs, England

Can anyone pretend to be surprised by this ruling? It's just another example of Russia's deep respect for the rule of law.

Michael, Blackburn,

If any of the big boys of online music had any sense they would take a good look and critically use allofmp3/mp3sparks to see how good they are, before buying them out or at least offering us a comparable service.

What is the point of down loading music from itunes and their rivals when you can buy the CD for the same price then encode it to however to you like and never worry about your portable mp3/hard drive losing it?

Come on apple/napster etc catch up...

David, Lincoln, UK

Screw the record industry. Greedy bunch of half-witted jingle producers. Let the artists sell their music, not the suits. If record producers didn't have such a stranglehold over who or what gets heard, we wouldn't have the vast wasteland of untalented, but overtly image-conscious losers phoning in their inane focus-grouped lyrics over a background of sampled licks and electronically produced beats.

Cheryl, Austin, TX USA