"After decades of having various music formats shoved down out throats lp vinyl, 8 tracks, cassettes, cd's the public has spoken with we're choosing this time.
Mp3's are the public's next choice of format."
The public can "choose" all they want. But having seen what the "public" does these days...I'd rather let the Industry "Bullies" decide on a standard.

"Why are compact discs $15-17.00 when dvd movies are at times half that?"
Because most movies have made thier money at the box office. VHS and DVD sales are just a nice profit. Instead of complaining about $15.00-17.00 for a CD how about lower some of the prices I see at movie theaters!

"File swapping can be monitored and a royalties can be distributed to the artists like ascap and bmi does with restaurants and businesses that play music in their establishements."
This is true...but why would ASCAP and BMI pay royalties on music that wasn't PURCHASED? You can't receive a royalty on something free. I take it you are not in any way involved in the music industry. It takes on an average of $500,000 to get a CD ready for sale. This includes recording, mastering, keeping the artists bills paid and a few other minor things. Now to promote that CD you need to spend even more money...in some cases well over $1,000,000 in advertising, tour support and who knows what else. Now, the record company makes about $7.50 per CD sold (distribution companies and record stores make the rest), that means that 200,000 CD's have to be sold to recoup that amount. But while the company has recouped that amount they now have to spend more money in promotion. See what I mean. I agree...CD prices can be lower but I understand why they aren't!

"I have ripped my entire cd collection to multiple hard drives through my home (over 1000cd's) With Windows media player9 and a creative labs audigy2 platinum sound card, I have my entire collection available with the cd cover art on each song at my fingertips. The mp3s are encoded using EAC with the L.A.M.E encoder using the alt preset extreme setting.. The sound is flawless.. I cannot find songs this quality in the swapping sites, so I buy the cd and encode it."
Sounds like way too much work for me! So what you are saying is you purchase the CD's, rip them to mp3 and then share them on the net? Material that people have worked day and night on, spent tons of money to record and release and YOU are giving it to the world? Let me ask you a question. What if you invented a product that would revolutionize the world and make peoples lives easier and someone took your invention and copied it and gave it to everyone for free after you spent a small fortune to get it to the market? How would feel about the lost sales? Anyone who says music should be free has never CREATED music on thier own and doesn't know what it takes to get music to the people! Studios cost money, instruments cost money, agents cost money and manufacturing costs money!

Think before you act!