The ones who are hurt are the songwriters / publishers, etc.
Illegal downloading is stealing...this “but look how much they make (the artists) crap sounds WAY TOO MUCH like Obama saying that at some point your’ve made enough money...what right does anyone have to say that about anyone else?
There is a VAST difference between songwriters/artists and publishers/copyright holders beginning with the fact that they are often not the same person/entity.
I used to go to friends houses with stacks of records under my arm. We’d sit and play them and argue about them.
I think it was the earliest form of “file sharing.”
Later, when playing in a band, we did covers, because that’s what the frats wanted to hear.
Around the same time, cassettes came out and you could could stack 2 hour’s worth of favorite album cuts back to back.
Nowadays people share music through ISPs they pay up to $50 bucks or more a month. They pay these fees in order to access and share media.
Too bad for the record execs. I can understand their position, but their rights to their “intellectual property”— rights that last much longer and are far cheaper to secure than patents— do not trump my rights to ‘security within lodgings” against unreasonable search and seizure.