Also, pretty much all fans of underground bands like Meshuggah and Napalm Death that I know of pay for their CDs to support them. I hang round with a lot of metalheads, and this issue often pops up in conversation, and all of them buy CDs because they feel like they are making a difference. I myself use iTunes to get my music (or other alternative legal sites), so I am on that bandwagon also.

Good point but even harder Dean, a country may change their laws, but this countries:

 

Source WIPO   Member States Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Congo Costa Rica Côte d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic People's Republic of Korea Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran (Islamic Republic of) Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Republic of Korea Republic of Moldova Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Somalia South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Tajikistan Thailand The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United Republic of Tanzania United States of America Uruguay Uzbekistan Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) Viet Nam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe       http://www.wipo.int/members/en/     BTW: 1. Anyone may use or reproduce any information presented on this website, subject to any specific terms of use that might appear with such information, provided that the use of such information is accompanied by an acknowledgement that WIPO is the source. http://www.wipo.int/tools/en/disclaim.html

 

1. Offering your albums to be downloaded for free need not be charity.  The internet has many free-service revenue sharing models where the seller gets paid for the number of hits or through ads.  The presence of ads too need not spoil your experience because AFAIK Google uses the same model and I at least don't find Google to be horribly cluttered but maybe I am less choosy, what do I know.  Heathen - a US thrash metal band - already offers their entire discography on their own website for free - helps pay for the website because of more hits generated and spurs sales of their CDs and also promotes their tours all in one shot.  AFAIK, most metalheads - myself included! - I know downloaded the Heathen albums from there instead of using torrents. The rationale of using an official channel to download is very obvious:  secure, assured quality, no viruses and no question of illegality most importantly.  You may ask why would anybody go to the legal free channel if there is an illegal one? I ask why wouldn't people make the shift, it would be a lot more convenient to use an official site or general music portal than to use myriad combinations of search and download engines.  As Mike -  or was it Debrewguy - pointed out, it's really the big labels who are reluctant to move onto such a model because they can't make a lot of money through such a model and can't pay for the big bosses' private ranch or yacht or what have you but it could help smaller bands survive and subsist instead of disappearing after two albums as they are usually forced to do.

2. As far as underground bands are concerned, I believe many of them use channels that don't depend entirely on the stores for income.  I have a copy of a demo by an Indian metal band passed onto me by my friend who had attended their concert.  The CD was sold as a compliment to the concert ticket.  That's then not a lot of money but at least it's SOME money and people get to know about the band.  Afterwards, when a full length is released on a label, you already have potential customers and people here at least do try to support local bands by buying their releases.  It's not patriotism or charity, just mutual benefit: the band survives and in a gig-starved nation, you've at least got some decent bands to watch once in a while.  Ergo, the underground scene depends more on keeping its proximate fanbase interested; few of them are going to break into the international market and if they do, it is ironically the internet that would have helped them to get attention through word-of-mouth promotion on music forums. Obviously the situation would be different in USA or Europe where you get to see the big bands on a more regular basis and maybe people don't care so much about smaller bands.   

(I don't do multicolour-quoting, so you'll have to work out which of my comments go with which of Alex's comments the hard way...sorry)

Part of the morality that stops most people downloading illegally is simply that - because it is illegal. The Governments can do lots of things, at the moment ethics and statutes stop them (Data Protection Act etc.) - every action you do on the Interweb can be tracked and monitored by your ISP, since every request and every delivery starts and ends at your PC hiding your IP address is irrelevant because your ISP knows who you are - if Governments and agencies put their minds to it, they can do plenty about it. They don't even have to go that far - they can set up fake torrent sites and grab every user who attempts a download (and who says they aren't doing that already ).

 

Copyright is the whole basis of music ownership - taking away the owner's right to sell (which is what making illegal downloads legal actually means), is taking away their copyright. The Springsteen example was to show that at the moment copyright is legal protection against Intelectual Property theft. A recording of a song is not proof that you wrote it. It is not illegal for a band to cover another artists song in a live situation, but it is illegal to record it (either live or in the studio) without permission or licence.

 

It's all proportional - if 40% of Eminems music is downloaded illegal and 40% of Marillions is also downloaded illegally the obviously Eminem is still being downloaded 1000s of times more than Marillion - however, if Eminem loses 40% of his income he is still rich - if Marillion do, they are even more broke.

 

Torrent sites have every reason to lie about their stats, even they want to be popular 

 

The negative affects are already evident - not see a correlation between downloading and reduced sales is just an excuse to justify downloading. Removing the legal restrictions of illegal downloading would dismantle the entire music business infrastructure - not just record labels, disty's and music retailers, but independent studios and sessions musicians - whether you believe that is a good thing or a bad thing is immaterial - personally I like home-studio recordings, but I prefer top-end studio recordings. People are complaining about the blandness of modern recordings as it is - imagine the situation where everything is recorded at home-studio quality to the same homogenised standard.