“How “nice” are the guys engaged in massive theft of intellectual property rights?”
Just because this crooked industry has bought off congress to make what once was “fair use”, a crime, doesn’t make it immoral or even wrong.
If the same copyright laws were applied the same for other copyrighted material, the companies that make copiers, as well as well as almost everything on the internet would have to go away.
However, there’s a huge difference between “fair use” — making a personal back up copy, or distributing samples of music for review — and mass distribution of bootleg copies over the Internet. It’s the latter that’s the issue now.
It’s true that the music business needs to find a new business model. Ironically, it wasn’t that long ago that the recorded music business (putting music on wax or vinyl) was highly disruptive of the previous music business model. Until recorded music, musicians had to perform live to make money. Composers or song writers made money from sales of printed music and lyrics. Music recording technology changed everything.
Recorded music impoverished most musicians — and made a select, and lucky (some might claim talented) few super rich. Such is the nature of a technology with high fixed costs and low marginal costs of production.
The new digital production and distribution technologies could open up many more opportunities for musicians to earn a living wage — while simultaneously producing fewer super-rich bands. IMHO, that would be a good thing.
Whatever business model emerges, the intellectual property rights of the artists have to be preserved — you either have a system that respects property rights, or you don’t. We know what happens to countries where property rights don’t exist.