^ What? I download heaping amounts of music for free, but I also bought this CD and have bought many CDs, as well as supported lots of bands by going to shows, buying merch, etc. I'm also a musician, and am quite offended that you would consider me a "highway robber who demands that musicians become my slaves". Come on now, thats just ridiculous.
If your "heaping amounts" of downloads are illegal, you're stealing. Plain and simple. You can justify it all you want. But the fact of the matter is you're stealing. It's against the law. It's the same as dubbing a friend's DVDs, or CDs, or reprinting books. It's piracy.
Worse, such an attitude of it's-out-there-and-I-can-BitTorrent-it-so-I-will creates a culture that comes to believe music is -- or should be -- free. It's not. It costs a shitload of blood, sweat, tears, time, energy, and monetary resources to create music. It's not meant to be free unless bands -- like Radiohead or NIN or whomever -- wish to make it so. But only bands of that size can. And, in so doing, they ruin it for smaller bands (and Indie labels) that can't afford to give away its intellectual property by perpetuating the idea that music should be free for the taking.
And it
does turn bands into slaves -- people who have to then beg, plead, hope, pray, and cajole fans to come to its concerts, buy its t-shirts, and, hopefully, support it enough monetarily to make the next gig, or the next album, possible. Bands aren't charity cases. They don't live by donations. They're not street musicians with a cardboard box at their feet into which passersby toss pittances. Bands create a product and sell it at a fair price. If people steal their product, the bands lose.
I stand by my original post. Illegal downloading is robbery.
Bill
