Certainly?
Perhaps I needed a bit more clarification:
"Downloading music that should be paid for, and not paying for it, is wrong if you keep that music for longer than you need to decide whether to buy it or not is wrong. Most people would make an exception for format shifting. EG you own a CD and download a pirate MP3. In theory this needs to be paid for (and is included in law in some areas) but in practice it's not much different to ripping your CD yourself."
I never understood how people came up with the caveat about trying before you buy. To me, it always seems to make a mockery of the whole thing even more. DOwnload an album. Listen for a couple of days. Go to the record store. Buy a CD. Throw it in the trash. Keep listening on your ipod guilt free, but still illegally.
Anyway, my point is that a lot of people don't agree that downloading music without paying for it is wrong. You could argue the point but I you can't just dismiss it with a "we can all agree that.."
Six months later, I still really love this band. I go to their website and buy the album digitally. My thinking being "I might as well purchase it the right way".
Six months later, they come to my town. I buy a ticket, and also purchase a physical CD (cause I'm a sucker).
I wouldn't have bought their album 3 times if I hadn't been able to pirate it first. I would have never even heard them play.
Now I don't claim this is the case for all the music I download. A lot of it is terrible (I grab the SXSW compilation every year). But I would spend far less money on music if I had to buy an album before I could listen it. And not just a 30 second sample, but enough time to really learn to love it. I didn't care for the newest Metric album at first, but after enough listens I came to really like it. The new Jonathan Coulton album, pirated, and again donated directly to him to pay for it.
This system may not work for everybody, but it sure works for me. I can filter out the crap, and pay directly to the artists I love (usually bypassing a huge cut taken from the middle men).
So if you have one take-away from this point, it should be to go listen to Imaginary Cities right away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2L7VT0Vg9E
And also that the cost of piracy is really hard to quantify.
Buying the CD is just of way of paying.
In the UK one commits two separate acts of copyright infringement by purchasing a CD, ripping it to their computer, and then copying the files to a portable music player.
I'm talking about legally, technically, wrong.
WHen people say "wrong" I assume morally wrong as opposed to illegal. But legally I'm pretty sure it's "wrong" to download songs to hear them before you buy a CD too.
Who decides that, and what gives it the moral authority to do so?
cstross makes good points about all the other people involved in publishing - especially editors. I'm not sure this argument is as strong for music, but maybe I'm wrong.