auralassassin wrote:don't parse words. it's stealing, plain and simple.
[RANT]Actually, it isn't stealing. It's copying. If you download a track, the original file does not disappear from the producers computer. The only thing that disappears is imaginary money. You MIGHT have bought the track, if you hadn't dl'ed it, or you MIGHT not.
I find the the fact that some people in this thread have gotten on their high and selfrighteous horse quite amusing. If you look at the top of this page, there's a link called "mixes" where you can find a whole shitload of DJsets full of published tracks, and download them for free. As far as I know, the legality of this is still under heavy debate.
Just for the record, I have dl'ed illegal tracks before, mainly as a try-before-you-buy sort of thing. I stopped doing that a while back and have just started an amazing relationship with bleep.com.
On the whole though, I'm all for piracy, never have so many people had access to so much good music, and it has made the major labels SERIOUSLY rethink their marketing and A&R strategies. Personally, I'm spending more money than ever on music and I know that it's mainly been the major labels that have been hit hard by this thing. Most of the independents are doing fine, as long as they don't release crap.[/RANT]