Since the first time we tried to steal little Jimmy’s bucket from the sandbox, elders have been telling us, “Don’t steal! Put that back!” By the time we reached middle school, the immorality of larceny only grew more complicated: “You best not be jacking my test answers …” Then, in 1999, the ethics of property-rights finally hit us right where it really hurts — our music.

In June of that year, college student Shawn Fanning launched the peer-to-peer (P2P) music sharing service Napster. Suddenly, the $18 sticker price for a record became a personal insult to the fans, as music-lovers everywhere began flocking to the file-sharing mecca.

Initially, the music industry was terrified by the anticipated plummet of their artists’ CD sales. This feeling was only intensified in March 2004, when Harvard Business School Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee released his paper, “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales,” which provided seemingly sound economic evidence for the unfortunate connection between “music piracy” and record profits.

As a musician myself, I have felt firsthand the effects of file sharing, when my band’s songs wound up on Napster and our record sales began to immediately slow down. Now, however, a few years later and a whole lot wiser, I see the tremendous benefits of file-sharing, not only for the listener, but for the artists as well.

For the purposes of this column, however, I will skip over the obvious reasons why listeners appreciate the file-sharing system, and instead focus on why P2P music-sharing services are not only nonthreatening to the artist, but are in fact beneficial.

A clear illustration of how file-sharing has stimulated, rather than hurt, the music industry can be shown through the record sales of Radiohead’s July 2000 release “Kid A.” When the album’s tracks found their way onto Napster three months before the CD’s release, industry execs believed that they were doomed. Radiohead had never even graced a top 20 chart in the United States, and had rarely received the necessary promotion and radio play to push their albums. When the record was finally released, however, major labels were astonished to learn that not only did “Kid A” break into the top 20 charts in its debut week, but it hit No. 1, beating out the most highly promoted artists of the time, including Madonna and Eminem.

This example plainly shows how Napster and other file-sharing services can be used as an invaluable source of free advertising for the artist.

In this respect, P2P is a lot like radio promotion. The one key difference: P2P costs the record companies virtually nothing, while traditional radio play can become extremely costly. What file-sharing services are effectively doing is managing an otherwise multi-million dollar promotional scheme for the record labels, without it costing these companies a dime.

Rather than the major record companies filing endless copyright infringement lawsuits against the P2P networks and their users, they should be cultivating the free and ingenious marketing strategy being offered to them.

Brett Schwartz is a sophomore philosophy and business double-major. He encourages you to steal his current band’s songs at www.myspace.com/ThisShipWillSail.