Everyone seems to think that digital piracy is just that, piracy. While in fact piracy is a much more vicious method of distributing content. What is standardly tied to the abbreviation P2P is a method of music, movie, or book fans to share the content they have to others. They have no intention of killing the artists business in any way shape of form. Those that do "share" maliciously are pirates. They purchase and then sell the content they just bought for a much lower price. This hurts the artists because when fans of these artists what to support them they end up purchasing what they believe to be legitimate material from an illegal source for a lower price.
The main reason that sharing services such as KaZaA, Limewire, Napster, and my personal favorite, Bit Torrent work is because when the content is downloaded one of three things happen. One, the recipient doesn't like the file and deletes it, two, the recipient likes the file and keeps it with or without further sharing, or three, the recipient likes the file and purchases the content supporting the artist. Most of the time either situation one or three happens. This allows the movie, music, or book to be “experienced” by many people quickly. This gets the artists name out there and more people purchase their material.
The newest idea is that you pay for the songs you download. The big problem with this system is that the songs aren't any cheaper. If anything they're more expensive than buying a CD. But once they're downloaded there shared using an application such as Limewire or Bit Torrent. No matter how you do it I believe that it will go back to the original method of sharing which works well and does support the artists. I know that when I download a movie that I like I go out and buy it. Music on the other hand is quite a bit harder. With music you get 10 to 15 songs on a CD. And the argument with most people is that they only like one or two songs on the CD and why pay $20 for songs you don't want. Because if this Napster took off and spread to KaZaA, Limewire and many others. But no matter how you look at it, it will always lead back to the “free” downloads of music or movies.
