This is just another way people justify what I consider "content theft". They want/need to spend money on the newest and brightest digital toy to show off to their friends but feel it's okay to steal the artistic content, whether it is a movie, music or a program. To so many if the content is not free it's a rip off.
Was the old Music Industry a corrupt business model, yes it certainly became that but for a long time it was the only game in town so that seemed okay. With the dawning of the Digital Age and digital delivery became a realistic way to get music it killed the old physical medium model, so gone are record stores but also gone are the revenues that artists deserve from the public for access to their creation.
There are real world consequences to artists in the digital age, I can cite one example. I have a friend that had a brief period of some creativity and notoriety. His music in a physical medium was for the most part hard to find, collectable and often expensive boot legs from which he gained no benefit from. Enter the digital age Napster and other free downloading sites and suddenly he became an underground sensation with thousands of downloads of songs and albums. Did he benefit? Not one thin dime! All the while he was disabled, broke and was forced to decide what to spend money on groceries or medication. The few hundreds or thousands of dollars could have seriously made his life deservedly better.
