In an effort to explain why I did not feel like I had done anything wrong, I suggested it this way, in an hypothetical question to the music industry:

How can you accuse me of stealing from you, something which you do not sell?”

Or… more properly, “something which does not exist?” (in anticipation of “well, my car is not for sale either. Are you gonna take that??”)

If the thing even simply existed to be purchased, I’d buy it. But there is TONS of stuff from the old days that was great stuff that I want in modern format, but they simply have not made it. What alternative do they offer along with their complaint?

Focusing solely on piracy as a given cause of the music industry’s illegitimate downfall has obscured thinking that piracy may, in fact, be a symptom. iTunes has showed that a revenue model can work. Many people feel $1/song more than offsets the hassle of piracy, along with the added value the iTunes ecosystem provides (very smart on Apple’s part). But, as you explained, the music industry doesn’t want to hear this and prefers to retreat back to selling platter “albums” and paying off radio disc jockeys. Do real disc jockeys even exist anymore? Are today’s teenagers even aware of the existence of radio?

Some 10-15 years ago the music industry would have been wise to take a page from Microsoft’s book and considered the pirated copies another form of competition. This line of thinking would have left them free to prosecute high value pirates but would have also put their frames of mind into considering what it is about their business model that attracts pirates and how they could capture that market with legitimate products.

But the solution isn’t complicated: lower your prices. Because high prices are always what motivates illegal trade. Don’t want to do it? Tough. Everybody else is. Want some ideas? Instead of contracting artists for 1-2 million dollars and requiring them to produce an entire album plus music video plus promotion, give them much less money (perhaps only for studio costs, which, let’s face it, isn’t much of a “cost” given they own the studios) for a handful of songs and a much higher cut of royalties. This puts the burden of competition onto the artists themselves, which is what they want anyway. Most of the promotion costs are poorly spent. Producing music videos and signing contracts with MTV are antiquated methods of getting the message out. Instead, pay modern venues like iTunes, Last.fm, Pandora, and Sirius to play your music for free with a $1 for a downloadable copy. Yeah, people will still use DownloadHelper to extract the song and put it on eMule/SoulSeek/Pirate Bay, but ignore them–we need to see the forest from the trees here.