Metallica: Pro-File Sharing now?

(Click title for re-routing to interview done by Rolling Stone)

At the light of success of such groups such as Radiohead and what Trent Reznor has been doing, Metallica has decided to set aside its formerly controlling and dominant views upon the file sharing community and copyright infringements. Conducting an interview with Rolling Stone, they made several key statements as to how the fight was "never about downloading", instead of the fact that it was about the artist.

What does this mean to you? Would you advocate Metallica's decision and views?

I think their statement is just a way of them trying to realize that their past views shut them off on an evolving market (digital format), and now that this market has become the staple, they need to tie off any loose ends or cut off any bad views that could be traced to them. I think it's fairly impossible to completely vanish from the minds of us older Internet users that their lawsuit was basically the prime reason for what happened to Napster, but should we really boycott a group that is capable of bringing out possible great albums just because of their older views?

Quoting ringo2 on the Rolling Stone article comments:
"We've always been fiercely independent and controlling; sometimes to a fault."

I really like this line. This is not the kind of artist that a major label wants to deal with, and of course there have been some BIG missteps with Metallica. I think they will be remembered like ACDC, Maiden, Priest, where they MOSTLY bucked the trends and did their own thing, which may go in and out of style - and that their biggest missteps were when they tried to be something else.

This is possibly one of the better comments and I don't think I could have said it better myself even if I tried, so all credit goes to ringo2 for the comment.

In all fairness, I hope that people don't boycott Metallica if only for the possibility of what their next album could be.