No... that's really not me. You'll not find a purer capitalist than me. I don't have any illusions that music (or software, for that matter) should be free.
I'm all for people being paid fairly for the fruits of their labors, at prices that the market will bear. I'm *all* for it. No worries here.
There's a lot about all this "piracy" sort of stuff that's been bothering me for a while, and I've had trouble putting my finger on it. On the one hand, people shouldn't steal the work of others. That's a given. On the other hand, there's something happening here that doesn't fit into the model real well. How many times can I charge people for the same work and have it still be right? It's the basic business model that just isn't making any sense.
In other words, I pay a carpenter to build a door in my house. I don't *license* the door from the carpenter, so that he gets paid for how many times the door gets used every month. Most people get paid once for their labor, but artists are in this odd category of people that think they should get paid over and over for the same work.
For example, a hypothetical question: The bar plays the song on the PA system for everybody in the bar to hear. ASCAP has a problem with this. What if everyone in the bar already owns a legal CD of the song in question? Have the bar owner and all the people in the bar satisfied their obligation to pay the artist for the right to listen to the song?
I'm honestly not trying to be merely argumentative here. I think there are issues that are different for this sort of industry that are different from other kinds of "products and services".
You aren't buying a door. You are performing a piece of someone else's work for a period of time, for a given audience.
Artists don't necessarily want to be paid over and over again for the same work; however the economic value of an artist's work can only be established by how many people are exposed to the performance. Therefore, the only fair way to reward a songwriter is to pay him/her a little every time the song is performed under certain circumstances. The more performances, the more important it must be, and thus, more reward to the people who made it happen.... theoretically.
Say I'm a songwriter. You run a dance club. You hear my song and think it's one of those great songs that will bring in customers night after night. Knowing that, you contact me to get permission to use the song. I realize what an asset it will be to your business, so I charge you a price commensurate with the value to your business, say $5000. You agree on the price and we have a deal.
Ideally, that's the way it would work. But you and I both know that in the real world, with thousands of songs, thousands of clubs, and thousands of songwriters, a direct deal like that just isn't feasible.
Knowing that, I hire an agent to take care of that licensing for me. I may not get a check from you for $5000 as in the first example, but the agent will collect some money from you and every other business who plays my song. As long as you keep playing my song, I keep making the money.
So, instead of a direct deal where you write me a check for $5000, you pay me through my agent on the installment plan. ASCAP serves as the agent, the intermediary doing the deals, for songwriters.