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Whenever an artist creates something, it is their right to decide whether or not to sell their creation. Some artists freely distribute files on their websites involving rare tracks or demos. Other artists wish to be compensated for anything they produce.
A band came to town that I thoroughly enjoy. When they switched record labels a few years ago, they lost the publishing rights (not the copyright) to their material. Their old record label pulled all their albums and refused to sell them or allow the band to sell them. The record label was angry at the band for leaving their label. Their argument to not handing over the publishing rights was, "we paid for those records, we decide when to sell them." Their music, however, is widely available on Kazaa. Naturally, being a fan, I downloaded their old material seeing as how I was unable to obtain it any other way. Recently, the band won back the publishing rights and I immediately bought the albums I have been listening to on Winamp for the past 2 years.
I spoke with a few of the band members after their show and talk turned to Kazaa and file-swapping. I was told that they were all in favor of it, as long as you actually bought the albums if you liked them. They are not on a major label and so they do actually receive a good portion of their record sales. When you are a band that only sells about 50,000 albums, every penny counts.
Not every artist is a millionaire on Sony records. Most of them make very little money at what they do. They sell records because they want to make money. If they want to give something away for free, that is their perogative, but I am a firm believer in supporting the bands I like with my dollars so they can continue to afford making music I like.
Not a legal argument, but my moral two cents.
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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
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