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That’s a specious argument. People are willing to pay large amounts of money for content. That has nothing to do with the propriety if people taking that content for free, other than it proves that those people are getting a valuable thing for nothing.

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If the tried and true method of getting paid is through concerts, Patreon, crowdfunding new albums, or selling CDs in the street, I don't think the market is as "unfair" as xhkkffbf is arguing.

I agree that this has nothing to do with the propriety of people taking content with a price tag for free. But I think muddling the market sense of fairness (I don't want to/cannot perform in a concert; people should pay me for selling MP3s online) and the ethics of copying data is dangerous. Especially when we are solving the problem through legislation.

There's nothing tried and true about that method. Artists do it because they have to, and the overwhelming majority of them are unable to make a full-time career out of it, and either relegate art to a side-hustle or take full-time jobs adjacent to their art (like recording engineering or record production).

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