This attitude never fails to astound me. Is this really a "conservative" board?
I mean, gee, I don't know ... Why should you be "forced" to pay $75,000 for a new Jaguar? Or "forced" to pay $60 for that entree at the new restaurant down the street? Or "forced" to pay 50 cents for a pack of gum when all you want is a single piece?
If you don't want to pay what a seller is asking for an album, then don't buy it. But don't then go steal it.
At what point did people start assuming that owning music is some kind of positive right? If you don't want to pay the asking price, don't buy it. When enough of us don't buy it, prices will drop, or new sellers will rise into place to serve our needs.
From where I sit, I have seen an orchestrated move on the part of record companies and the Recording Industry Association of America to ultimately control what you can listen to, and how much you can pay to do it.
Such things as:
The destruction of Internet Radio
Setting higher prices for CDs instead of lowering them to make them more affordable (look here) to consumers
Eliminating the single, forcing consumers to buy entire albums for one song
Bullying college kids out of their life savings (look here).
Meanwhile, the artists themselves are not quite as against this as you think they are. Just ask Janis Ian.
If the RIAA et al was not so anxious to bite the hand that feeds it, I would agree with you. In fact, I am still very much against albums and movies becoming avaliable for download on the net before they are even released to the public. But this is just malarkey. The RIAA and friends should get only what they deserve.