An AP article posted on today’s Philly.com reports that free peer-to-peer music file-sharing has become “fundamentally unstoppable”, according to a state Senate committee. According to the report, P2P has become even larger than the multi-billion dollar recording industry.

“The free downloading habit among 61 million Americans and millions more worldwide is “cemented,” with only 9 percent of U.S. downloaders believing they are doing anything wrong, media analyst Eric Garland told California lawmakers Thursday.”

“We see only one trend,” said Garland, founder of Beverly Hills-based Big Champagne, which analyzes Internet trends. “More people are downloading more copyrighted material.”

I have to seriously agree with the report. Despite the demise of Napster, numerous other P2P services (such as KaZaA, Gnutella, etc.) have stepped up to pick up Napster’s crown and carry on sharing.

Maybe the only solution is low-priced MP3s direct from the record labels, but then again, even this has been tried and seems to fail miserably.

I guess the only option is to let the music industry and P2P services to duke it out and come to terms.