Is this an honest question or are you being disingenuous like so many others on this thread.
I don't know why copyright law is so hard to understand. If GM sells you a Corvette, does that convey a license to you to manufacture Corvettes? Is there a limit on how many Corvettes GM can sell (other than production limitations)?
Selling a product is not the same as selling the patent/copyright interest in that product. Most people here are confused by a simple lack of knowledge about business law.
The artists received not one cent of the money from the MP3.Com settlements of approx $158 Million to the labels. Who did??? The label themselves.
Why didn't the artists get any of this money? It sounds like the RIAA are doing the stealing.
The "patent/copyright" concept was created in order to help someone maintain proprietorship of an item even after he's sold it.
You can as easily maintain that when I purchase a CD, I am purchasing a recording of one particular performance of that artist's work, and that he is free to re-record that performance over and over, creating a new marketable product.
The reason WHY the industry is so hot-to-trot on file-sharing, is that they supposedly lose the potential for the sale of a new unit with each download.
When I sell my old Supra, Toyota loses the potential sale of a new unit.
That's the argument the recording industry is making.
They are simply lazy, and greedy.
When I downloaded songs, they were recordings that I couldn't find elsewhere, in a lot of instances, they were out-of-print. I used a file sharing system because it was convenient, fast, and available to me 24/7. Asides from that, I don't have to buy ten other recordings that I am not interested in to do that.
The recording industry is trying desperately to hold back the tide of evolution, they will not address an obvious need of their customer base, they are trying to use the law to stiffle innovation in their industry, even if it means throwing customers in jail.
Let me give you an example of something.
I just bought a CD from Amazon.com, $13.19 plus shipping for 11 songs. That's about $1.23/ per song, plus shipping and handling. It's a new artist, and I want to listen to the CD to see what I think. No problem there. I also ordered a new copy of "Hotel California" to replace my old one. No problem there either.
Now, I've been looking for recordings of "Morning Girl" by The Neon Philharmonic and "In A Broken Dream" by Python Lee Jackson for almost ten years now without any success. I found them both in a matter of seconds on the web.
The recording industry wasn't interested in selling me either of those recordings, but now, they want to prosecute me for getting a copy from the net?
Not only that, but I recall a few years ago, Frank Zappa, John Denver and others, testifying before Congress on the issue of government censorship of the recording industry. They stood on the First Amendment to do that. Now, they are advocating what constitutes illegal search and seizure to protect their interests.
What a bunch of friggin' hypocrites.
That's my problem with this whole thing.
They need to get off their fat, stoned asses, and address this obvious need of their customers.