If anyone can just go to the library and check out a book for a month and read it for free, how will authors make money?
If anyone can pick up radio waves and listen to music for free over the air, how will musicians make money?
Don't get me wrong, I agree that downloading music all day long and never paying for it is wrong. But your questions are far from unanswerable, and you're falling into the liberal trick of asking a question, not receiving an answer, or maybe you receive an answer but you're unwilling to concur with it, and then continuing to believe that the unanswerable question is proof that your position is right.
The recording industry will tell you that pirating and peer-to-peer sharing are costing them dearly. I sincerely doubt that. I believe most recording companies are doing magnificently. Recording artists are making platinum sales left and right. (Remember when achieving GOLD sales was rare and meant you were stunningly successful?) And the CEOs of the recording companies are living in bigger and bigger mansions higher and higher up in the Hills of Beverly.
You don't realize that 90% of the stuff kids download are songs they wouldn't buy if they had to spend the money. By definition that's not cutting into sales.
You sneered at the assertion that spreading mp3s around would get the performers bigger sales of their concert tickets, and belittled the notion that they should have to give performances to stay alive. First off, sneering and belittling are bad arguments. Second, they don't "have to give performances to stay alive" because concert ticket sales are up (except for this summer, thanks to the recession, not the stealing of mp3s). The Beatles never gave a concert in a football stadium.
Back in the Nineties I had a young friend recommend Placebo to me. I had never heard of them. So he sent me a few of their files. It didn't take me long to love their lead singer's voice and their sound. I have bought four of their albums (I would have all of them right now, if I weren't dead broke) that I never would have bought had it not been for the sharable files.
There are videos of Corvus Corax--a group of Germans who perform medieval music with wild enthusiasm--in concert on youtube now, but twelve years ago I used to have to send mp3s to get my heavy metal friends (who I knew would love them) to listen to them. I was right and now, thanks to me and mp3s "going viral", there are probably forty or fifty more lovers of medieval music than there would be otherwise. I know at least some of them, like me, have bought some of Corvus Corax's albums. And thanks to youtube, I now just send URLs to the videos. Songs do go viral and they do promote sales, regardless of your contempt for the notion.
In short--you're wrong. And the record industry is also wrong. They probably know that mp3 sharing is helping them as much as it's hurting them but the corporate selfishness you're always reminding us about is keeping them from letting go.
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