The problem is that the entertainment cartel has been using their considerable political clout to abuse their customers and their customers no longer see the point in continuing to give them money when the result will be more abuse.
The US Constitution stipulates that, in order to facilitate the spread of ideas and arts, creators of intellectual property are given a limited monopoly to receive restitution for their creation.
The problem is that one word...limited. That's kind of vague. And when Disney, the MPAA and the RIAA can buy Senators and Congressmen to keep extending their government provided monopoly so that the "limited" idea of the constitution is essentially meaningless, many feel that the rights of these companies to continue to milk their customers over and over again for the same product are no longer valid.
If an author writes a book, his intellectual property is safe as long as he never publishes it. And a songwriter need not worry about his IP being stolen if he never sings the song in public. But that would rather restrict the spread of ideas and entertainment. Thus the government provided copyright monopoly.
If publishers and record companies are having trouble making money with their same tired old sales techniques, I feel for them. But the problem is less with the people that are beginning to ignore their bleating than it is with the idiots that feel that they have a right to continue making money doing the same old thing. I'm sure buggy whip makers were irritated when the automobile started selling, but they didn't have a staff of lawyers or the wherewithal to buy the senator from South Carolina. If they had, you'd probably have paid for a brand new buggy whip along with the undercoating and shipping fee on your new Ford, Chevy or Toyota.
Times change. The publishers and producers need to change their sales techniques to keep up instead of whining and litigating. To put this into perspective, consider this:
The companies that make up the MPAA and RIAA made more money in profits than the US spent on the FBI and CIA combined last year. Why do they need the taxpayers of the US to continue to support courts and police to prosecute people that violate their copyright? Why not invest some of those profits in developing a better way of distributing their products that is less likely to be subject to violations? Shouldn't their shareholders demand that they do so? Isn't that the smart long-term solution?
Isn't streching the Constitution all out of shape in order to benefit a few people one of the things that a good conservative is supposed to oppose?
I guess it's easier to keep buying political clout and file lawsuits than it is to fix their business model. Ok, let 'em go for it. But don't expect very many people to feel sorry for them when they fail.
If spyware and unauthorized software activity were problems associated only with pirating music, I'd not feel to upset about it. But, this is not the case. Even "legit" software from "legit" companies such as McAfee, Intuit, and others has a problem staying off of the internet. I pitched McAfee Antivirus and firewall due to its insistance on accessing the net every time I got connected (and this even with the automatic update feature turned OFF). Likewise, Intuit's Quicken was full of "features" that wanted to access the net without my permission. And who can forget the C_Dilla fiasco with TurboTax last year. I have caught other programs as well, using firewall software.
And we can't forget the neat little cookies that all kinds of web sites attach to our computers to track our usage. Or the more sophisticated spyware that gets installed with some "free" search console or other neat little applet that we might find on the web. Or the popup ads that annoy some of us.
I've made my computer almost bulletproof to all of these annoyances, but I'm sure that new ones will take the place of the ones rendered ineffective.