Really, even the industry cartels can't prove it. (And their attempts are laughably bad and transparent)

Can you?

But lack of sales, okay. The music industry reports record profits year over year, so those artists you speak of don't represent the larger trend in any case.

Let's pretend that it did for a moment - is that drop in sales due to:

    * A minority of consumers downloading, rather than buying
    * More choice in the marketplace (more stuff for people to buy meaning the existing players get a smaller slice of the pie)
    * Less quality in the marketplace (pandering to the lowest common denominator resulting in flagging sales due to a percieved less quality product)
    * The economic downturn meaning less got spent on entertainment anyways
    * or something else?

More concerts is a good thing, direct sales to the customer, direct profit for the venue and artist, more exposure.

Relying on one channel for revenue is a disastrous rolling of the dice. I'm not here to apologize for people who willfully engage in subverting the purchasing process to get music they want, but I'm also not going to show sympathy for an industry that wants to remain rigid and inflexible with a changing marketplace either.

Good, because this has actual value, unlike copies of digital data.

There is simply no way to sell on the free market objects with an almost infinite supply without appealing to outside forces like state regulators.

How would you feel about companies using GPL licensed code in close source products?

In what context? A laissez-faire economy without patents and copyright? You'd have to also eliminate law enforcement when it comes to licenses to render GPL useless, but I don't see how is this relevant to the discussion about the intrinsic economical value of digital data that can be copied at an almost zero cost.

The point I'm trying to make is, that the protection offered by copyright extends beyond monetytization as it's often reduced to. (understandable in a capitalist econonmy, where Almosen everything has a price) Instead it allows the right holder to limit how it's distributed or attach conditions to the distribution. The GPL with its limitations on how I may use a piece of software licensed under it is one outgrowth of that. If you reject copyright, especially for digital goods, you should be fine with the GPL becoming useless.

You have a point. Yes, the loss of enforceable licenses would be acceptable in a system without artificial means to stop the flow of data. It's not like most of us have the means to go to court over GPL infringements anyway.