I have friends in Turkey, they said the local phone company which supplies the DSL internet, sent thousands of regular mail to customers warning them about illegal downloading. Some customers got court hearings as well. That is why rapidshare is common not torrents in Turkey. I think it is the same for all Europe now.
If the country you live in says downloading is not illegal - is it still stealing. If a country makes a law which 70% of the people break... is it really a crime. Should it be a crime. Does law have to be just Should gov't represent the people? Why should you not be able to take pictures of art and not music? Why can't you make copies of organized digits? Why are some works in the public domain and other not? When to morals, ethics and law intersect. Is it wrong to download music or just illegal?
Let's say I don't download anything, but I am a frequent visitor to the local library, also member of a bookclub and occasionally I borrow a new book/video from my neighbour. I always give everything back to the owner of those things. Am a criminal, just because I don't pay at all for temporary using those books/videos? If you look at it this way, there is no difference between the above mentioned and downloading, assuming you don't keep/burn them but after viewing/reading but you delete them. (which I actually do,except music) So one can look at the internet as a huge library, with no waiting period for new books/videos... After all I can get new stuff from the library too, one usually just have to wait in line for them...
Yep, years back they did, since then downloading music has only become bigger, that loser band that thought they could stop it all together just created a bigger downloading empire. Aside from that what many do not understand is that musicians DO NOT make much from the sales of cds, they make their money touring and a if your a huge band with at least 4-5 singles on a multiple of albums you can pull in tens of millions of dollars a year touring, sales of cds brings in just pennies a piece for them.
Metallica lost me as a listener when they pulled the lawsuit card out. Their "music" over the last fifteen years has been horrible as well.
You can still go to any one of the dozens of websites that offer downloading music for free today. Limewire Kazaa Imesh bearshare etc etc etc
Metalica thought there was going to be no such thing as digital downloads and that compact discs were going to be around another 25 years, haha. As soon as napster shut down numerous site reappeared and the downloading game began again and is still going strong today.
musicians make plenty off hit albums -- unless they negotiated a really stupid contract. after the recoupables a typical artist might get paid out about dollar to dollar an half per album. recoupables might be 100,000 to 500,000. Depending on recording distribution and promotion costs.