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When I was in college, years ago, I would make cassette tapes of albums and CDs that others owned. These were albums I never would have paid for in the first place, because I didn't know the music that well. If it ended up being an album I liked alot, I would buy more CDs from that artist. If it was a band I ended up not liking so much, I wouldn't.
Those bootleg tapes became the seeds that grew into probably 50-100 legitimate CDs purchases that never would have happened otherwise. I was stealing, but I was also consuming, and the money went where it should have, because the good artists eventually got my money, and the bad ones didn't.
Today, I don't think that model applies any longer.
People like Articrono are going to be the death of the entertainment industry as we know it. If nobody pays for this stuff, the budgets to produce it will get smaller and smaller. Blockbuster movies will be a thing of the past, and Blair Witch Project style movies will rule the scene. Similarly, big rock bands will be no more, and a large number of small independent bands will rule the industry. As consumers, we'll have a lot more choice because technology improvements are lowering the barriers to entry, but it will be much less polished. And the artists will not be living large.
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