For Taylor Swift, sure. But there is an increasing number of musicians owning their own recording equipment and producing pro-level recordings out of their home (just like starting a software business out of your home is increasingly common).

For these people, they put up the capital. While I won't condone piracy of any copyrighted works at all, it's not reasonable to assume that all musical artists are impacted by copyright infringement in the same way.

Home producers may well be absolutely thrilled to make a few thousand dollars in sales a year, in order to continue funding their own work. Why take that away from them through piracy?

[There's also the argument that small act home producers should be thrilled to get the exposure even if nobody is paying for their recordings. As a home producer myself, I find a small amount of comfort in that, but professional-level recording and music equipment isn't cheap... I'll fund it with other income as needed, but I'd rather have my music outfit be self-sustaining.]

I'll do whatever I can to support content creators.

Does that make it OK for artists to get 2.34% of what listeners pay for the music they make? Or does it make TechDirt's figures wrong? If so, how?

> Or were you not paying for anything already, and then came across that info which now justified your position?

I am not striking, but I agree with everything s/he wrote. And, as it happens, I do pay for all the music and video and software I acquire. So it is simply not true that holding the opinions s/he expressed is always a rationalization for not liking to pay for things.

(And: do you actually have any evidence that striking pirates things rather than paying for them? Or do you just assume that anyone who takes a position opposing yours must be a pirate?)

TPP/TTIP/RECP leaks suggest the criminalization of non-commercial copyright infringement, where prosecution will be possible even if the copyright holder does not want to prosecute, e.g. fanzines.

Can we develop a payment mechanism which moves funds from audience to artist for virtual goods, with no exchange of music (which can be obtained on any channel), but which provides a non-forgeable "protection from being prosecuted"? This would return control to the artist.

Unbundle the music license payment from music delivery payment.

The reason labels have such high overheads is the same as for movie studios . They subsidise a lot of non-Taylor Swifts music that don't end up being profitable. The costs of the failures end up impacting the profits of the successes. The flip side is - lots of artists get studio time and songwriting time even if they haven't already proven themselves.