Lawrence Lessig suggests four types of digital downloading: a substitute for purchasing, a way of acquiring old music that is copyrighted but is no longer in circulation, to sample and then later purchase or to access material that has not been copyrighted. Record companies would have us assume that only the first type of downloading occurs and this is the only type where record companies would loose money.
The illegal sharing of music can benefit artists such, for example Metallica, who gained fame through the illegal copying and sharing of their early material on cassette tapes. Now with growing technology such as you tube and myspace this is a lot more common and easy today.
People will always find ways of copying music and getting it for free and digital downloading doesn‘t change that. Real artists should perform their music for artistic reasons rather than financial gain and hope that if they are good enough, people will pay to see them in concert.
While I applaud your idealism about real artists perhaps there is a balance to be struck.
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