Really, the market is just being efficient. Right now, people want X. They could buy X for the price of a plane ticket and a CD and spend 36 hours of their time to obtain it, or they could download a torrent and be done in minutes. People are going to do the second one, regardless of the fact that they have no "right" to. Why? Because it's easier, and humans are lazy.
As soon as every piece of music ever made is available from one store as lossless files, then there will be no excuse for music piracy. But as long as the middlemen want to segment the market artificially, the market is going to fight back. It's the recording industry middlemen that are hurting the artists, not the pirates. The pirates are just correcting the market.
(The same goes for movies. Get rid of bullshit DRM like HDCP and region coding, and suddenly your sales will go way up. People don't want to buy a special player / cable / monitor combo that supports strong cryptography. They want to watch a movie. So don't do that, or the pirates have you beat on features alone, even though you created the content. That sounds fucked up because it is! Movies are not designed to prop up failing consumer electronics companies' bottom line. They are designed to be watched.)
What kind of "right" are we talking about here? Moral, whose? Legal, in which jurisdiction?
Under your definition of right, do they have the right to deny me their content they won't sell to me, if my consumption causes them no loss?
If a bar won't let me in because I'm underage, but they position their TVs to be perfectly viewable by someone standing on the street, do I have no right to stand around and watch the TVs?
By this standard you will happily then give me your paycheck for this coming week correct? I believe the output of your work to have zero value, therefore your work entitles you to zero compensation. This is essentially your argument. Why would an artist want to produce music if they can't afford to pay their bills because you deem it your obligation to have their work for free?
Repeating this doesn't make it true. A specific pair of jeans costs a specific amount to create from raw materials, and if not paid for causes a loss. The situation with a set of bits being copied is subject to interpretation and I don't see why your interpretation is any more valid than mine or anyone else's.
My paycheque is the result of an agreement between me and my employer, who does believe the output of my work to have some value. Whether the people who use Facebook apps I help build or the corporation that paid my employer for them agree is irrelevant. Artists and producers get paid by their label, in some degree, independent of efforts of the distributor, and certainly independent of the public's perception of the worth of their work. It might influence their next contract (just like everyone thinking my work is shit/great would influence my next job offer), but few contracts are written to be based 100% on distributor's performance.
However, I will be sending you a bill for reading my posts in this thread. You value the content enough to read and reply to them, and so you are causing me a loss not paying for the content.
Again: if a bar won't let me in because I'm underage, but they position their TVs to be perfectly viewable by someone standing on the street, do I have no "right" (under your definition) to stand around and watch the TVs? Why or why not? Is the bar functionally different from a music or film distributor?
I don't expect to get a pair of jeans for free, but not for that reason. I don't expect to get a pair of jeans for free because nobody offered me one. If someone did, I expect Levi's to stay out of the deal, because it's none of their business. And more generally, I don't expect to get offered a pair of jeans for free because nobody can manufacture them for free, and because I can't trivially copy a pair of jeans. Given the availability of replicators in the future, I expect to get jeans and many other things for free.
Someone has bits and offers to provide a copy. Someone else wants those bits and takes them up on the offer. A copy occurs. Nobody else has any business getting involved; any third-party control over that transaction can only occur artificially. That doesn't represent a statement of morality, just a statement of how the world works. Re-examine your claims and consider what assumptions you've started from.
You don't have a natural right to get paid by someone unless they agree to pay you.
I did not say that at all; for one thing, your use of the term "steal" implies a position I fundamentally disagree with. You've assumed a certain moral position which supports the idea of copyright, and you want everyone else to express their positions relative to your opinions on morality. I refuse to do so. I don't agree with your opinions on what you consider "right" and "wrong".
The original creation of those bits need not occur for free, as evidenced by the various crowdfunding platforms or other such mechanisms. The person with useful bits can decide how they'd like to distribute those bits, including if they'd like payment for those bits; they should have no control over copies of those bits.
These are contradictory no? What if I as an artist say that my wish is that no one should have a copy of my mp3, or listen to my music I produced without paying me for it. If you copy the music without paying for it you are directly going against the artists wishes correct? He produced this music and he'd like to get paid for it...
edit: Since I can't reply below.
Come again? So I as an artist should only be expected to be paid for one sale of my digital album? This makes no sense and sounds like some crazy argument just to justify copying music without paying anyone.
No, you as an artist can offer the product for purchase and/or download ("original" as in it comes from you). Real fans and People Who Want To Support Musicians can then buy it from you. People Who Suck And In Res0nat0r's Opinion Steal Music can copy one of the original copies.
You can expect to get paid for creating your album in the first place. And once you stop thinking of it as "I sell one copy for $19.95 and everyone copies it" and start thinking of it as "Fifty thousand people all agree to buy it for $19.95 if I create it", it makes a lot more sense.
They haven't. They've agreed, in advance, to pay $19.95 for the creation of the album. You then create the album. You take all the payments of $19.95. Then you put the album up for download.
You wouldn't. Release some samples first. Play at venues. Make a name for yourself. Make people want more.
Why would you want to hire a hacker you don't know and haven't seen work from? Either you take a chance on someone who looks good on paper without seeing any of their work, or you look for someone who has already demonstrated their ability. The same thing applies to artists.
Just because you can copy paste a file and then share it easily with the world, it doesn't mean those bits came to life for "free".
Maybe for you, the filesharer but whoever produced the first bytes you are (not) enjoying, the writer, the musician, the production team, they all have paid a price to produce it. They spent time and money learning the how-to and getting good at it, time and money they could have spent creating other forms of value to trade for other people's value.
You say that because there are no reproduction costs, does it make it a free meal for everybody? Not according to the cook, that could have decided to pay for it and give it away (open-source, everybody's happy) but decided to put it for sale on the market expecting honest buyers to choose it if the price and the quality is right.
"Is this a good deal? Is the value I'm getting worth the asking price?" That happens all the time, for every kind of product. "Is this custom Challenger worth the 50k the car dealer is asking?" If you can't afford a car or don't think the price is reasonable, would you steal it just because in any case you won't end up paying the costs spent to create it?
Somebody will, though.
A few weeks ago I discovered on Youtube a master at playing the guitar whose stage persona is known as Buckethead. His music teared me up inside (Check out "Soothsayer"...). I could not but think "Damn, I need to send some money to this guy as a BIG ASS THANK YOU MAN!". By giving him my money I'm encoraging him to keep doing what he is doing the way he's doing. I want him to keep making music.
What struck me is that Buckethead has been playing the guitar for almost 30 years now. He's spent dozens of hours playing it. Without people "thanking" him with their hard-earned money, he would have probably had to work a 9-to-5 job to make ends meet and then maybe play the guitar. He would have had less time and energy to play it "as a hobby", he would have never got so good nor ever seen a reason to record his music ("Dude I'm playing for myself") and distribute it to the world. A lot of people would have never been touched by his music, myself included.
That would have sucked. The world would have been a poorer place, I would have. Being able to enjoy art makes us all richer, so why not make artists we listen to happy by providing them the means they need to keep their art-creating business alive.
Why should I crowd-fund somebody I don't even know? I just buy his music if I like it and want to listen to more than a few times. It's simpler than messing around with crowd-funding platforms. You pay later instead of funding first.
If artists can't profit from their art, only the already-rich, philantropic artists will eventually be able to produce or sponsor "free" music.
What if I couldn't afford to spend 20/30 bucks to see him live once a year or 40-50 USD for the 3-4 albums of his I love to the point I want to own? Should I be pissed at him because he's not playing for the glory, living on food stamp, maybe working another job not enjoying his life as much as he's doing while expressing himself the way he feel, 24.7?
Hell no. Instead of looking for ways to "game" the system, I am (and we all should be) always looking to provide more value to other people, making more money so I can choose wisely how to spend it for stuff that makes my life worth the ride. Our levels of consumption and production need some kind of balance.
So stop making up excuses.
If you can't afford something, ask yourself if you really want the thing or not.
Don't confuse your lack of money with lack of motivation. Be ready to work your ass off and pay the price.