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Cooch pointed out some of the points I wanted to make about the difference between piracy and copyright infringement (piracy involves the high seas and actual loot).

. Remember legality != morality. Laws are rules that people make up that take away freedom from every citizen to protect a certain group of people. That group of people is probably not you. It was once ILLEGAL for blacks and whites to marry before Loving v. Virginia but that doesn't make it morally right. Because it is extremely hard to determine the morality of laws, each state has their own law making body while our country as a whole also has a law making body at the federal level.

. You aren't really taking the profit from the pockets of the artists. Who's to say that you would have payed actual money for those songs had you not downloaded them. Take the 1000 songs you downloaded, and if the going rate was $1 per song, you would have payed $1000 for music. Seriously, would you have payed that amount of money for those songs you downloaded? Besides, most artists are whores to their distributors (record label) and are being pimped out by them. The label gets most of the profit while shortchanging the artists. That's why so many of them have gone independent and chose alternate ways to distribute their music i.e. NiN and Radiohead.

. Metallica is a bunch of whining crybabies. Their snobbery has caused them to lose a big portion of their fan base who really thought they were about "F***ing the system". Besides, their post 90's stuff is garbage anyways...I wouldn't even download it legally if it was free.

. You might be actually helping the artist advertise his/her name. Say you downloaded songs from an artist that is unfamiliar around you and your circle of friends. You find out that it is really good music and discuss it with your friends. Now they all know about the artist, hence, free advertising. Then they tell it to their friends. Next time that artist tours in your area, you and your friends cough up some cash to attend that concert. Everybody wins. This has happened to me lots of times.

. Technology advances on an use or lose basis. If we don't use it, we might lose it. Had so many users not used Napster in the mid to late 90's, we may all still be using 56k today because there would really be no great desire for higher bandwith to be accessible in the residential market. Know that by using your choice file-sharing software, you are supporting something bigger than yourself. The same thing happened with nuclear energy, had we pursued stabilizing this form of energy, we wouldn't be in this energy crisis of today. Now more than ever, during these desperate times, we are pulling out those old blueprints and schematics from nuclear technology.

. Know that YOU are not the cause of the failings of the music industry. How many artists have you heard about that are now staving because people downloaded too much of their music? The RIAA themselves are even admitting that those so called lawsuits on copyright infringements aren't doing anything to help their profits and might even be deterring consumers from buying their products.

All that aside, if you are downloading music and selling them off for personal gain, then you are wrong. That is a sin that one Our Father and 3 Hail Maries won't fix. Please report yourself to the local authorities. You are profiting off of somebody else's blood and sweat.

In the end, the artists will be fine. Support the artists that you actually like by buying their CDs or going to their concert.