While we could argue the first sentence, it's not germane to the discussion. People are getting sued for distribution, not for personal use.

But it's mostly about distributing it to people who wouldn't buy it anyway. If they want to claim a file copied to 100 users prevented 100 sales, they must have a reasonable evidence indicating those 100 downloaders are capable and willing to buy every song they download, which is probably not the case.

Most downloaders I know of are more collectors and explorers than anything else. By making numerous copies of artistic works, some of them very obscure, they could as well be providing a valuable data preservation service for future generations.

Just imagine if a generation manages to completely DRM works of art just to discover they lost their keys and the programs required to reconstruct those works... Without proper context, they will look like random noise to future archeologists.

I agree artists deserve adequate rewards for their works. Perhaps a compromise should be reached. It seems copyright has been abused and extended far too much, to a point where it creates more harm than good.

The nature of peer-to-peer networks is that personal use is distribution. Treating file sharing as equivalent to mass-producing unlicensed DVDs contributes to the public's outrage.