But it’s not at all that simple. Films, music, and the culture industry as a whole is a winner-take-all market. Sure, it’s true that popularity keeps the JK Rowlings and Stephen Kings of the world in 7-figures, but the vast majority of authors and publishers lose money on their publications. Just like in the national elections, my vote doesn’t really matter. If I want to see le parkour in films, I can go and see a movie five times, and it’s not going to have any impact on whether it is made. In other words, the studio system is built on the roulette wheel of breakout hits, the demand curve is ridiculously non-linear.

But the larger issue is that you seem to conflate morals and law in what you’ve written above. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral, and just because something is illegal doesn’t make it immoral. This is why words like “piracy” and “stealing” seem badly suited to this issue. Copyright makes culture into a commodity–without copyright, it exists outside the realm of consumption. It’s not a matter of “sticking it to the man,” for many people, it’s a matter of, simply, wanting to listen to good music and not wanting to pay for it.

Is that getting something for nothing? Of course it is! But we get something for nothing all the time. One of the most enjoyable things in the world for me is to walk along the beach or through a forest. There isn’t anything commercial about that process. (Actually businesses would love to commoditize it, and have been marginally successful in doing so, but leaving that aside…) Music existed way before there was a money economy, and will exist long after.

Of course, from the perspective of a business, this is lost revenue. But it’s important to notice that there are more perspectives than that of business alone.