Shii Posted:

It’s a valid point, but at least SOME of that music would be legally bought. They might not spend $6,000 on it, but I’m sure they’d have at least 1,000 songs or so.

It’s not an issue of being “holier than the savages,” it’s an issue of paying people who deserve it. If some artist paints a new painting, if someone just walked in and took it cuz they wanted it, what kind of argument would “I’m too cheap to pay for it” be?

What kind of argument would “I just want to try it out and see if I like it” be?

In the real world, theft of property isn’t tolerated. Why is it tolerated online? Because it’s easier? Because everyone does it?

Here’s a shocker: not everything “everyone does” is right.

Your examples are flawed in so many ways it’s difficult to count them. For one thing, downloading a song is nothing like stealing a painting. If anything, it’s like taking a photo of the painting. By downloading, I’m not stopping anyone from buying the song. As for “I just want to try it out and see if I like it”, that’s a perfectly reasonable argument. I would never spend $15 or whatever CDs cost these days on a CD from an artist I never heard of. I would, on the other hand, download the album, see if I like it and then, if I do, buy the CD. Artists don’t make their money from CD sales anyway; record companies do. The same record companies who always choose the lowest common denominator to feed to the mbumes and that have made intelligent, mind-stimulating music nearly extinct these days. You want to support an artist? Go to concerts, buy merch at gigs, let other people hear their music and tell them to see the artist live if they get the chance.