Mundane wrote
This thread is moving a bit fast for me, but I'd also like to chip in with a (sorry if this point has been made before):
The whole point about 'copying music is wrong from an IP point of view', I don't know about that. To me, if you were depriving the artist of something (for examble if you sold the copied material and received money or goods for it that should rightly have gone to the owner of the IP), that is wrong. If somehow, you were unable to listen to, or obtain the music any other way than by paying for it, you probably won't buy it or hear it, so the owner of the IP would not receive income from you. Realistically though, you can most likely get a copy of the music for free, so the owner of the IP still does not receive any income from you. You aren't depriving the owner of the IP of anything. I still buy the CDs I like, but I do like having the option of deciding if an album is good before I buy it or even just buying the songs I like as singles.
On the other hand, with music being so easily available to anybody with a computer, it's a lot easier to market your music. Mika made a very good point IMO that these days, the recorded format serves more as marketing than a main form of income for touring bands. Obviously this affects musicians who don't tour very differently but how can you make this distinction as the guy who listens to the music on your PC/Ipod/etc?
The above complexity is the reason that IP laws and terms of use focus so much on the file copies themselves. Because to try and enforce the terms of use around how somebody MIGHT or MIGHT NOT use the product is impossible.
In my opinion, if someone copies an MP3 but never listens to it, then that person isn't truly depriving the artist of anything at all. He derives no enjoyment or use from the file, so you have to ask, "does this really take anything away from the artist?". The fact that it happens to be on his hard drive is irrelevant, really, because he never uses it.
However, the law can't deal with that level of complexity in a practical sense, so they tend to be written around restrictions about copying the file itself. That's what the file copiers don't like, because hey, we're just copying files right?
So somewhere along the line the point gets missed. It's pretty obvious to me that the artist doesn't care about unused copies of a file on a hard drive somewhere, rather about people listening to his music when they haven't paid for it. And the way that the law is implemented to prevent people from doing that is a bit flaky because it relates to the copying of data from a practical perspective.
So the file-sharers moan about how you can't call file copying "stealing" (even though that's not what's being stolen) and the legal bodies spend all their time trying to shut down and constrain technological avenues which is never going to work. And somewhere there is still a muso who isn't getting paid for his work.
Your final sentence, for me, is the real force behind piracy in general: it's sommer so EASY. From videos to games to music, it's easy and fast and inconsequential enough that everyone just does it. There's absolutely 0 chance of you being caught or persecuted, so why not? If you never listen to it or use it, what difference does it make to anyone, really? And that is true, actually.
I think we're all arguing across each other here. Some of us are saying "support your artists", and others are saying "let us copy our files". You can, should, and probably do, do both.
