File sharing is different from YouTube watching and listening.
YouTube at least makes the smallest fee available to the artists, while wholesale copying proves nothing to the artist.
That should read, “provides,” not “proves.”
I’ve bought “The Best of Three Dog Night” for times: Once in vinyl, an eight-track, a cassette tape, and a CD. That’s enough. I ain’t paying royalties again.
I am of the opinion that if their stuff is good enough to buy, then they don’t have a problem.
The problem is when it’s not. How many of you have bought an LP of some band that you like, and had maybe 1 or 2 tunes that you actually liked on that record with the other 10 or 11 tracks being garbage? I have hundreds of these records and I view file sharing as a sort of restitution for all of the crap that they have sold over the years.
File sharing/pirating is for the most part, stuff that the down-loader wouldn’t have bought anyway, so they re not out anything.