Is listening to the radio wrong? Is watching MTV (at least when they actually play music)? Then why is it wrong to download a song you want to listen to a couple of times? I've bought hundreds of CDs and cassettes over the years. Some of them for one or 2 songs. Then they sit on the shelf collecting dust.
You know it's not illegal to make someone a compilation cassette of songs you like. Your not selling it to them. THAT"S illegal. When I want a song, but have to pay $15-$21 to listen to it, that's outrageous. Especially when the artist is making pennies from it. I could buy the single, but that's even worse. $6 for a song I've heard on the radio a million times, and some B-side crap.
And my computers are my CD players. They have better speakers. My home CD player won't even play a lot of this stuff that's put out with copy protection, and I rarely use it. But I don't want my PC to freak out because someone has decided I can't listen to their music on what I want to use. So what do I do? I download the song from someone who broke the copy protection.
Or just played it in a regular CD player, and hooked it up to the line in on their PC.
I'm not saying stealing music is right. And definitely selling bootlegs is wrong. But to listen to a song for awhile, then to just let it sit there taking up hard drive space. Or to download something live or rare, or that you could hear on the radio all the time, don't call me a thief. The Record Companies are thieves. I'm not stealing music to sell it and take the $$$ from the artist. If I'm going to buy a CD, I will.
Someone's got to buy the CD in the first place to put it out there.
-
Generalizing is always wrong.