[Sethomas]

I used to hang out a lot at a sleazy punk venue, and I found that the musicians who are the most hard-pressed for money also tend to be those who look well upon downloading. They're glad for kids to be swapping their songs because at least that means people are listening to them. If they are foolhardy enough to rely on music to pay the bills, they get their money from playing gigs. Comparing musicians to house builders and factory workers is asinine. When the fell swoop of capitalism strikes down a musician's dream, it's not like there's a void left in the economy as would happen when houses need built or buttons need pushed.

Another complication I see is that most kids don't have the attention span to listen to entire albums, and now they don't have to. It's the pop way of life to engineer three or so songs for radio playability then fill the cd with 9 tracks of spacer shite. Such groups are the ones getting hit the hardest by music piracy, and I have no sympathy for them.
The respectable thing to do is download a song that gets stuck in your head, and figure out that of which you'd like to hear more. (God, I hate akward constructions to avoid ending sentences in prepositions.) Then go out and buy the album. Good bands make albums to which you can listen for an hour or so and be thoroughly pleased. Anyone who downloads every song of such an album is just an asshole, though.