These ears aren't deaf

[Hellheart]

Yes, it is stealing. I'm not disputing that, I said so in my post. However, the moral obligation has proven itself to not be an effective enough deterrent in this case. This is not to say that moral obligations are not a deterrent, but rather that morality applies as long as being moral is both an affordable and preferred state or action in the eyes of the person making the decision. Many people won't avoid things simply because they're immoral. Hell, driving above the speed limit is immoral, that doesn't seem to stop people, especially if they want to get somewhere quickly and can't afford to wait.

Some people will always download music for free. I will, in fact, be one of them, if only for the bands I don't really like but want to have for other purposes, or just to listen to very very occasionally. I do this with full knowledge of the copyright infringment and its effects. For a lot of music, it's just not worth the effort nor the money to purchase it at current prices, considering the sheer volume of music I consume, even though I benefit immorally from the works of others. Those who buy CD's and resell have already bought the CD - the artists get full revenues from that sale, and I think the labels do also. You do screw the retailer, though, but if the other option is not to buy the CD, the retailer actually makes money off this method. I've been considering using this method myself because it's within my price tolerence, and I only recently had this pointed out to me.

I can't give an absolute price. For one thing, royalty agreements differ depending on the popularity of the band in question. Certainly they'd have a floor at cost (including costs for things such as marketing), plus a retailer markup percentage. iTunes has a set price of $1 per song. If I only like 3 songs on a CD, and I have iTunes, I'm not going to pay much more than $4 (cost of time included, rounded up) for that CD because I'd rather buy the tracks and burn them myself, along with other songs I like more, as long as it's not more expensive to do so. If I don't have an iPod, I might be willing to pay more than $4 because converting iTunes files to .mp3's and burning them results in songs of a noticably lower quality. Notice that conscience does not apply here because both the labels and artists get a portion of what you pay. Thus, CD prices now need to compete with iTunes to sell anything at all.

If a person isn't going to buy from iTunes because a song's too much for them, they're probably not going to buy at all. $1 a song with unlimited CD burning and iPod transferring is cheap enough for impulse purchases, even. I still download for free because if you just consider the CD's I listen to frequently, I'd pay over $375 for inferior quality (blank CD's can fit ~80m of music, as opposed to the ~60m on the typical bought CD) because converting those songs to .mp3's results in a loss of quality (damn DRM).

Jaywalking is a crime. How many people will skip crosswalks if they would have to cover a block or half a block and the road is clear? Not all crimes are viewed as crimes by those performing them.

Illegal downloading can hurt bands, or labels, so a person might take issue with that analogy. When a person is distant from the ones they hurt, they don't feel as responsible. Example:

Workers in China are making horribly low wages for longer working hours than here in the US. Some people here take issue with this, but most of them (or at least those who could influence things) don't, even though these workers are responsible for many products we consume. Most people here don't care enough about it to pay more for the products those workers create and put in the effort to actually increase their wages. Otherwise, actual strong attempts would be made. The workers need it more than the labels and bands do, but some people will help neither, and many more people will only help the latter, because they're less distant. And no, it doesn't take more effort to *attempt* to change this, because all a person does is write to his/her congressmen about it, and pray they actually listen...or, alternatively, donate to the appropriate NGO.

That's the closest analogy I can get at the moment. Note that both the workers and labels are responsible for some of the luxuries we consume here in the US, so it's similar in that respect also.

All that said, when my income is sufficient I will purchase more music in some way, shape, or form because the cost won't be so large compared to my spending budget, and at that time the moral issue will have more weight than the extra cost.