For more than a decade now, I've bought almost no major-label music. Instead, I buy from the artist's website if that's an option, or their CDs at the table in the back after the show (implicitly, going to the show), or the like. Or I go without. (I did have an eMusic subscription for a couple years, and got a lot of stuff from that, but IIRC, there was very little RIAA-member label music on that service at the time.)

Were I hypothetically to have illegally downloaded an album by a major label artist, my calculus would have been, "Well, the artist isn't actually going to see any royalties from this anyway, so the only party getting screwed by my torrenting it is the label," and felt no qualms about it.

Anyone going into the music biz as an artist since Courtney Love's Salon article (which has been on the HN front page at least three or four times since I've been here, but linked here [1] anyway) has had ample opportunity to realize the screwing they're signing up for when they John Hancock the label's contract. I can't muster up much pity for their getting shafted by the smooth-talking record exec they should've known was just going to shaft them anyway.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/