Feds to audiophiles: You're all pirates now

This is pretty simple if you put yourself in the shoes of the artist. Piracy doesn't hurt the major artists as much, since they have always made the majority of their money on concert revenues. However, to the small artist that produces, records and distributes his/her own music - piracy takes money directly from their pocket. Let's say an artist is doing the coffee house circuit and he hopes to sell maybe 20,000 copies of a self produced CD. Some guy buys a copy and distributes it to 100 of his buddies as an mp3. That's money right out of that artists pocket.

Dreadhead, you're right, I don't have 100 buddies. But I have 10, and those ten have ten, and so on and so forth. I guess I just don't get the concept of expecting a music artist to give me their work product for free. Opalchip has summed it up and I'll leave it at that.