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Study: MP3 Sharing Not Serious Threat To CD Sales
pkaral writes "The two distinguished gentlemen Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee have most likely made RIAA executives choke on their lunches. Those two economists at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill have done the research and the math on how much CD sales are actually hurt by P2P sharing. The answer: A whopping one CD per 5,000 files downloaded. Needless to say, RIAA are already trying to discredit the study."
Now I expect a full apology and retraction for the demonization P2P has gotten from the RIAA, et. al. They should be trying to increase downloads like radio stations try to increase listeners.
Record labels should distribute approved MP3 tracks, then offer them as singles on CD, just like the radio stations. They should closely scrutinize the downloading habits, then create an album based on the popularity of certain tracks.
They don't see this as a tool, only as a threat. They're idiots.
TV Production should do this too. If Viacom released official BitTorrents of Enterprise, complete with banner ads at the bottom of the screen, I'd download them. The banner ads would make me more likely to delete it when I'm done watching it, which is what they'd want, right. Then they can still sell me the DVD.
That'll probably never happen, though.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
RIAA: File sharing hurts our beloved industry.
Student A: Have you heard that new song from ? It's awesome!!!!
Student B: Yeah I'm going to see them next week in LA!! Road Trip!!!
Student C: I'm going to buy that album they put out last year.
Student D: Me too!
Student A: Yeah it was largely underrated, I guess.
Harvard Prof Guy: Consumption of music increases dramatically with the introduction of file sharing...
RIAA: Harvard SUCKS!
two distinguished gentlemen Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee have most likely made RIAA executives choke on their lunches
Thats all you have to do to be distinguished around here...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I feel the best thing about P2P is that you learn about other music that you don't hear on the radio. This is what scares the RIAA the most, not a loss of sales but of a loss of control on what you listen to. If people start listening to independent artists they will no longer just listen to britney spears or limp bizkit or whatever crap the RIAA forces down peoples radio.
I have found out about so many bands that I like that I would buy their cds or see them in concert because of mp3 sharing. I never would just go buy a cd of some band I have never heard of; but I can download an mp3 or 2 and discover that I really like the band. I'm glad that there are people studying it from the opposite angle of the RIAA.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
I love it when people pounce on one study that happens to agree with their viewpoint and discredit studies that contradict them.
I'm talking to you guys, not the RIAA.
Free over the air radio has always been considered a promotional vehicle for music artists, that hearing a song on the radio is more likely to inspire sales than prevent it.
More or less, at this 1 CD per 5,000 downloads number, downloading is being called a push, it gives just about as much as it takes away from the recording industry.
I think what the RIAA is really scared of is the fact that P2P distribution might allow an artist to gain fame and make money without going through the "major label system" and that'd be the death of that system. So, it's not that P2P threatens CD sales as much as it threatens RIAA-member CD sales by replacing them with something else.
RIAA:
Obviously, these "economists" are just a bunch of nerds with too much time on their hands. What kind of degree does it take to teach at Harvard? A PhD? Like that means anything. Our marketing guy has a Masters. These professors don't even have any platinum records.
There are probably no study in the world that could convince RIAA that P2P is good for business. They've made up their minds.
BUT, it might convince lawmakers to whink twise, and it shows the common man what they already know: if you want something that is good, you'll pay for it. If you got a broad selection to sample, you'll more likely find something YOU like.
Larry Rosin, the president of Somerville, N.J.-based Edison Media Research, said ...
"Anybody who says that the Internet has not affected sales is just not paying attention to what is going on out there," he said. "It's had an effect on everything else in life, why wouldn't it have an effect on this?"
I think everyone agrees that the Internet has affected CD sales. What they (RIAA) don't get is that it can have a very positive impact on music sales and marketing. It opens a new way to sell music, which the RIAA has failed to take advantage of in any meaningful way. If they were to embrace the possibilities I think they could increase sales dramatically.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
It may be piracy, but it's not stealing... it's called infingement, escape the common misconceptions ...
is of course lagging music quality! If Metallica's St. Anger is not selling like hotcakes it's because it's abject, utter crap, not because you can get it for free on the internet.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
...A study by Sharman Networks shows that CD sales are hurting file downloads on their popular file sharing network Kazaa, and have been for some time. Sharman Networks proposes a tax on every CD sold to accomodate for these losses...
I agree with you on this and it could only get worse. When things just started to get out of control is when Napster was pinched. My Dad just started looking at Napster and WinMX at that point. Now he doesn't dowload anything because of the whole napster thing. If this truely had moved beyond us geeks, the potential for damage to the music industry would be much greater. Don't fool yourselves....P2P will affect revenue and it IS stealing. That said, don't make it hard for me to listen to my CD on my MP3 player.
Gorkman
The # 5,000 does not even appear in it, and it says they sold MORE copies, not less.
they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy, the researchers found.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You may think they are trying to keep what market and distribution methods are available at a cartel. While that's what they are publicly doing, I doubt the masterminds behind the member companies are that perversely blind.
You have a bunch of big corporations, that by definition are not going to be able to react quickly to new changes in the environment. There's layers of bureaucracy within, and many times (think Sony Computer vs Sony Music) the left hand wants to slap the wrists of the right. I think they're just looking for a way to take advantage of the new system but don't have a clean implementation ready to put into production. So they make loud threatening noises and otherwise put up a front.
Then they come out with a new system that everybody had already proposed ten times over three years ago. And everybody, especially the cartel members, end up happy.
"Intel will continue to use its own IA64. No, we are not going to use AMD's x86-64 extensions."
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Yes, but how many did you avoid buying, because after listening to it realized it sucked? Without p2p, you'd be stuck having to buy the CD first to find out if it sucks. Hence, more money for the RIAA.
=]
What?
I think this information needs to be approached skeptically, as there's no way to measure reliably "what would have happened." Given a lack of P2P sharing, can you say for certain how many CDs you would have bought/would not have bought? Of course not.
If CD sales for a popular download increase by 2%, can you ever prove they wouldn't have gone up 3% if not for downloading?
I just don't think this can be proven either way.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
If you read the actual article, it says that the study concluded that file sharing INCREASES CD sales. On their "most pessimistic model", which is not the one they think is most likely correct, they compute a decrease in sales of 2 million CDs in 2002, which they say is statistically insignificant in comparison to the decrease of 139 million CDs sold between 2000 and 2002.
The reason I stopped buying CDs and continue to download mp3s is because of how the RIAA reacted to the situation. Many others feel the same why. Why should we buy CDs? I'll support the artists by going to their concerts instead.
They like to jump around like a big angry monkey and spread their lies and misinformation to get the public (and government) to see them as "poor me, people aren't buying our music" instead of coming to the realization of "Hey, maybe the music we're putting out is junk."
Then they huff and puff, throw lawsuits left and right in an attempt to SCARE people into buying their products. Coercion, anyone?
I think we've all known for quite some time that mp3 downloading is equivalent to when recordable cassette tapes were introduced. There was a frenzy from the industry as if it was the end of music and sales as they knew it. It wasn't.
Now we're seeing the truth.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
"Its still piracy," you say. What is?
:)
Do people illegally download copyright material? Sure. But --
Is it piracy when I download out-of-copyright old radio programs*? Or sample songs from bands who specifically encourage this? What about lectures stored on a Morpheus server in L. Lessig's campus office?
Both "downloading" and "p2p" can mean a lot of things. I plan to buy a CD of Nero Wolfe MP3s in part because of the excellent episodes I've downloaded so far.
Ah, well.
timothy
* Orson Welles' radio stuff is pretty incredible; his presentation of Dracula in particular is great
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Sky often described as 'blue'
RIAA,MPAA and SCO still suffer from delusions of sustainable profit via litigation
'Open Source Software' community remains fragmented Microsoft called 'evil' by some
Apple hardware percieved as 'expensive'
Intel based hardware discoved to fast, moderately reliable, and disposable.
okay enough stoopid jokes
foreach ($monopoly_action as $headline)I personally have bought more CD's because I discovered a band I had never heard of via mp3 download.
{$knowledge = beat($headline);}
function beat($deadhorse)
{if($deadhorse){return "jelly";}}
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
File-sharing music has hurt sales. Because now you don't need to drop a bundle of cash on an album before realizing that the cd sucks and never listening to it again.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
The only thing that will convinve legislators to choose the common man over the recording industry is an equally funded lobbying group... not likely
Available in PDF format via Koleman Strumpf's site.
I was looking at my old portable stereo with two tape decks, and realized that the 2nd deck didn't even have a play button. All it had was record, to record from the first tape deck
So, let's think about this -- in the early 80's Sony was making devices whose sole purpose was to record music from other mediums. I will tell you 99% of the time I used that deck to record a tape I had borrowed
The music industry managed to survive a time when they were making devices to copy music (and I'll tell you right now, 10th generation analog copies did not bother me).
A 5th or so generation tape introduced me to what became one of my favourite bands for a long time ... The Violent Femmes. I ended up buying every one of their tapes, then their CD's hen it turned into that.
Nothing has changed in the last 25 years, other than the fact that the recording industry is trying to find excuses to generate revenue through a blanket tax.
Doesn't this same thing occur every time you listen to the radio?
You might say no because there are advertisers who are paying for the space, which the radio station then gives a portion to the music industry, thus paying the artist back...a pittance.
Well, consider this. By downloading a song, many people, according to the study, often go purchase cd's from these artists whose music they have enjoyed for free. This is even better for the artist because they get at least a little more because it is direct revenue for them and the music industry.
Another example, you can go check out a book from the library for free and read it in its entirety. For free! Not a single cent goes to the author. Yet, you're still enjoying the fruits of the author's labor without paying for it.
Open your mind, see the possibilities.
Instead of circle jerking on slashdot--if you really care about this issue, send a copy of the study to your local congress-critters. Yes, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what the RIAA shovels at them, but it's at least more tangable than "mp3s @r3 t3h r0x0r" and it's a damned sight better than nothing!
1 CD per 5,000 files.
That should show the RIAA how hard it is to find decent music these days.
Quality. Not quantity.
It's neither piracy or stealing, it's called "copyright infringement"...that's the term the LAW uses exclusively. And even then, it's only for those cases of P2P exchange which are done outside of the allowable exemptions to copyright law.
If nothing else, this study even deflates the already weak argument that P2P is "stealing", because the argument used to be that by downloading you are "stealing" the potential income of artists. Well, without the economic argument now, then what exactly is stolen? There is nothing missing.
You're correct in pointing out that 1/5000 is still a significant number. But also that the study does not concentrate on the other side; that P2P may inspire sales that never would have been made.
The funny thing, but not unexpected, is that most businesses would be jumping for joy if a study like this came out. That percieved threats to your business in fact turned out not to be that bad after all. The RIAA/MPAA *should* be pleased by this study. IF it was about economics. But their reaction shows that it's not about the money at all, it's about their ability to totally control and manipulate human behavior and destroy capitalism, e.g., power.
I realize it is popular Slashdot dogmatism to insist that filesharing doesn't harm CD sales, and this may be true now, but what about in the future as bandwidth increases?? The RIAA might be evil, but they are not completely stupid. Right now, downloading songs one by one and tracking down every song of an album is time-consuming. But the RIAA realize that it is only a matter of time until it is faster and more convenient to download an entire album then go to a music store. When that time comes, their current business model will be borked. Other than distribution, the only service the record companies provide is marketing. When P2P distribution beats them out, they will die. Bands don't need a record company to finance the making of their album (with ever-cheaper home recording equipment). They can distribute music by themselves. So the only value the record company gives the band is marketing (and this doesn't add any value for the listener). So the RIAA realizes that in the long-term, they could be fucked. They might be able to retain the business of folks willing to listen to pap fed to them by marketing reps, but that is about it. (Not that this isn't a sizable source of revenue though....) I hope eventually artists will be able to build online music communities of people willing to support them, and then the RIAA will wither and die.
Deconstruct the State
I stopped downloading mp3s regularly already some time ago (about 2 years) not really because I was afraid of the RIAA/MPAA/whomever_else, but rather because I was tired of downloading Jason Donovan's latest hit under the name Rolling_Stones_Start_Me_Up_Live_In_Birmingham.mp3.
/. after all):
During the 3 year period where I did use Napster (and Kazaa later on) to download mp3s I bought the bulk of my 250+ CD collection, mostly of bands that I had initially heard via P2P. In that sense, it did work a bit like radio.
Not unlike many others, I also burned CDs with those MP3 files, but there's nothing like owning the real thing(TM) so I ended up buying the CDs of bands that I really liked.
This has been said (only today) already about 300.000 times but I'll say it again (this is
When will ??AA realize that CDs don't sell because:
a) sometimes the music does suck
b) we all get the feeling of being ripped off when paying 20 EUR+ for any CD or DVD, especially knowing how much of that goes to the artist
c) trying stuff is something you have to do. Would you by a new pair of trousers without trying them first? Would you buy a car you never drove?
.sig
Quoth the researchers:
Oberholzer-Gee and his colleague, University of North Carolina's Koleman Strumpf, also said that their "most pessimistic" statistical model showed that illegal file sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.
Respondeth the RIAA:
Weiss cited a survey conducted by Houston-based Voter Consumer Research that found those who illegally download more music from the Internet buy less from legitimate outlets. Of respondents ages 18-24 who download, 33 percent said they bought less music than in the past year while 21 percent bought more. Of those ages 25-34, the survey found 25 percent bought less and 17 percent bought more, Weiss said.
Earth to Weiss: These people bought fewer CDs in the past year, yes. But your stats show nothing about that being correlated with the fact that they are file sharers. Where is the control group? The stats on CD purchases of non-sharers? I'm sure their CD purchases skyrocketed last year, right? Oh wait:
illegal file sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.
Huh. Who'da thunk it?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Now when I buy a CD, it's because it's a really good CD, not because it was marketed really well. I have P2P to thank for that. Besides, P2P is just a scapegoat. If sales are down, it's really because more of that disposable income is being spent on DVD movies.
RIAA has restrictions that you can't distribute the music they produce. The GPL has restrictions that you can't distribute binaries without giving access to the source code. Downloading music withot paying for it is morally equivalent to using the GPL in closed source products.
If you don't agree with the license, don't use it.
Hurt the RIAA by stop using their music.
As Napster became more and more vilified, companies refused to let employees use napster at work. As a result, by the end of 2001, I was no longer able to use it at work (and had dial up at home, so the time it took to screen potential candidates was approaching an hour per song). With the covert and overt poisoning of tracks placed for sharing, it is not worth my effort to sift through the trash in the hopes of finding gems.
Since being unable to hear new music due to the interference of the record industry (and its cronies BayTSP and congress), and the concentration of ownership by conglomerates like Clear Channel, all the radio stations are becoming the same play list. As there is no way for me to discover new music worth listening to, my purchases of albums dropped from 200+ per year in each of 1999 and 2000 to 1 album in 2002 and zero in 2003. I have about 700 CDs, enough CDs that I probably do not need to purchase any more for the rest of my life. Since the record industry is determined to prevent me from discovering new music, it looks like I already have a lifetime worth of music. From 200 albums per year to zero, the RIAA has decided that I do not need to buy any new music ever again.
What could convince me to buy more albums? I would have to find stuff worth listening to. I enjoy classical, techno, jazz, new age, folk and stuff that gets called world. With the exception of 2 spanish language stations, my local radio stations only play country, pop and rap. The spanish language stations have more interesting music than the english language ones. Guess I need to brush up on my spanish.
The current distribution system for music is BROKEN. Existing and proposed legislation just serves to enforce and prop up a distribution system that was (and still is) corrupt and crooked for the last 70 years. I chose to not support the corruption with my money. I chose to not support the crooked politicians who dance to the tune of the RIAA. It is my money and there is no law requiring me to subsidise their corruption, not that it would be a constitutionally valid one even should one exist.
Unfortunately, the RIAA have painted themselves into a corner with the jihad they have declared against P2P. There is no possible way for them to admit their mistake without them losing billions in the RICO lawsuits that would result. Unfortunately for the RIAA, it is them or America, and and currently, the RIAA is winning the propaganda battle while subverting the justice system of the US. It is as corrupt and evil as if AlQeda was in charge of the White House.
It is not piracy. Piracy involves boarding and stealing ships in the sea with the casual murder of people.
It's called copyright infringement. Escape the common (publicity induced and totally unfair) misconceptions...
;)
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
A work's creator, and only the creator, should have full control of the work's copyright for a strictly limited time, after which the work should enter the public domain. This is all just my opinion, and is an awful lot of shoulding, but there it is.
Also, I haven't seen this suggestion here before, but if you want to try out different artists/genres/whatever, and if you live near a half-decent public library system with half-decent interlibrary loan services, you can check out CDs instead of (at the moment) illegally copying them.
Just my 2 cents worth (for large values of 2).
In the case of Copyright, it grants the holder thereof a time limited (though it's an insanely long one, all the same) monopoly on the production and the initial distribution thereof for a given piece of literary or artistic work. To duplicate or distribute duplicates is to infringe upon that government granted monopoly. Hence, the term infringement. If I take, say a DVD, and sell it to you, it's not infringement, per rights of "first sale", meaning that Copyright distribution rights only extend to the first sale of the media that a work is placed upon.
You see, contrary to what all the business people have been saying about "intellectual" property, it's not property per se- it's not a tangible thing. Making copies doesn't take the original item away from the owner. It does lower the amount of money they might see, but it does not directly take money out of their hands, nor does it deprive the holder of the so-called property.
Stealing is the taking of something in a manner that directly deprives someone of the thing taken. There's legal terms for this- theft and larceny come immediately to mind.
Infringement is not stealing in any legal sense of the concept- you can apply less than common dictionary definitions for the term or moral arguments to the mix, but you'd still be wrong because there IS a distinction for the whole thing all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I don't reccomend trying to define stealing in regular dictionary terms, when it's a legal definition that matters.
Alexander Pope wrote a very long poem, called "the rape of the lock". It's about a young woman's suitor trying to take a lock of her hair. He's not even a stalker or a thief, as this is all an elaborate game to impress her with how much trouble he will go to to woo her, and she isn't averse to being wooed, just enjoying the attention. Words can be stretched, sometimes a whole lot.
Here's a few reasons why I'd suggest you reconsider useing words such as stealing for copyright infringment.
1. All theft is criminal. Once, all copyright infringement was always a matter for civil courts only, and even now, only some forms are criminallized, since the late 90's. Was the US wrong for over 200 years before that, and still half wrong?
2. In the US, all infringment is under federal law. The Supreme court has ruled that the 50 states have no right to make or interpret copyright law. If infringment=theft, the Supreme's reasoning on this would limit the rights of the states to have their own laws on theft as well, or the states would need to insist they have te right to pass their own laws on infringment, so that they did not lose the authority to prosecute theft (and possibly other crimes - imagine if a state couldn't prosecute a man for murder, if he shot someone who was engaged in interstate trucking at the time in that state).
3. Federal law carefully puts infringment under a completely different title than all federal laws regarding theft. Titles are broad categories of law, intended to keep very different areas seperate. Appellate courts frequently compare one law to another, if both are under the same title, (for example if a cruel and unusual punishment defense is invoked) but are much more reluctant to compare across titles.
4. The US signed a treaty called Berne. It relates to civil violation of infringment, and by signing it we have agreed with 181 other nations that infringment is primarily a tort matter, as Berne stresses certain parts concern civil law only and have no authority to regulate the criminal laws of the signing nations, and yet bringing the US into compliance with Berne is cited as the base for much of this new legislation since then.
So the reason to call it not theft is, your legislators say it's not theft, the highest court in the land says it's not theft, just about everyone else in the world's governments says its not theft, except North Korea and the People's republic of Yemin and a few similar nations.
Now if you live somewhere besides the United States, the of course only some of these issues apply to you.
Who is John Cabal?
Seriously, thye may genuinely not believe the report, in which case, they should simply say that, but they seem to be a lot more aggressive than that with their refusals.
What if the record companies actually considered for a second, that there was a possibility that this report was actually right! Then the only possible result could be to increase their profits! By just dismissing it as rubbish, they're harming themselves more than anyone else.
Did it ever, ever occur to you that you might be wrong? How in the world do you think Microsoft got to be the biggest software maker? Same goes for Adobe Do you honestly think they saturated the markets with SALES of their product? What do you think brought down the Soviet Unoin? How do you think the Americans finally got rid of Prohibition? In fact, how do you think American business, especially the entertainment business, got started? Did you ever see the numbers from a few years ago during the height of the downloading scene? Record companies were showing record profits. Sales AND downloading decreased about the same time. Piracy has always been a minor problem for Apple. What do they have? Maybe five percent of the market? Get your head out of you...er...the sand, and at least make a feeble effert to understand that maybe, just maybe, your business model is obsolete, and that you should adapt to the "new world order" of virtually free internet publishing. I find it really weird that you young kids cling to tightly to 19th century ideas. I always hoped that people younger than me would be a little more enlightened than me on how to treat others.
By the way, unregulated P2P DID affect CD sales. They went UP. When everone gets their fat pipe, that too will help sales of music, if not CD's.
What?
It is not piracy. Piracy involves boarding and stealing ships in the sea with the casual murder of people.
It's called copyright infringement. Escape the common (publicity induced and totally unfair) misconceptions...
It's called a "metaphor."
When the natives complain about the white man raping their land, the white man didn't actually rape the land. It's a metaphor.
When they say that Kazaa is the bastard son of Napster, they don't mean that Napster, as a company, somehow copulated with another company, producing an offspring company, then denied ever having sex with the first company at all. It's a metaphor.
When you burn a CD, there is no flame involved. It's a metaphor.
When you surf the web, there is no actual surfing involved. It's a metaphor.
When you pirate music/software, you are not actually running around with a parrot, an eyepatch, and a pegleg, boarding ships and stealing software. It's a metaphor.
Think outside the box a little, instead of blindly latching on to the watered-down, pre-approved things that you're allowed to rebel against.
(Note that I'm not implying there there is an actual box involved, that you're actually blind, that there are any latches involved, or that anyone has actually sprayed water onto anything).
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
The only thing dumber than the notion that unregulated P2P doesn't affect CD sales is the notion that unregulated P2P actually helps them.
Fat pipe, indeed.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
[what?]
Then consider the case of DVD's, as you mentioned. For slightly more than that overpriced CD, I can get not only a full length movie, but usually a whole other disc filled with behind the scenes info, out-takes, alternate endings, directors commentary, etc. It's not just about wanting something without having to pay for it, it's about getting a product at a reasonable price. In any market where people feel gouged, any reasonably priced alternative will flourish, even if that involves the creation of a black or grey market. Of course, getting something free will always be an attractive offer if the perceived consequences are minor.
It's the strong-arm tactics of the RIAA, without the promotion of reasonable alternatives that earns them the label of "goon".
I read it on the Internet, it must be true!
Here is how I feel about it.
If you can PURCHASE the media (song, movie, dvd) somwhere, anywhere... online store, for-fee download, brick and mortar store - if you can buy it somewhere, then you should really question why you are downloading it "illegally". It's pretty much as simple as that.
You may have to search the internet for the label; you may have to purchase from the label directly - if that's the case, do it. If you think it's too expensive, if you can't afford to buy it, then don't. But that's no excuse to download it. Bascially, just don't download anything that is available for purchase somewhere. It's unethical. Unless, of course, it's one of those rare books or works of art that are available under a creative commons license or some other license that allows you to do that. But those are exceptions, not the rule.
And this is sort of a catch-22, because prior to the "PC", young folks have often spent money on media (music, magazines, movies) that they couldn't really afford; it would be fair to say that the entertainment industry thrives on money collected from millions of people that really couldn't afford to give that money in the first place but were sort of suckered into it by the hype and the fanatacism that surrounds celebrity.
So the "PC", a.k.a Redmond, has usurped the scam; replacing it with another one.
But seriously, if you can buy it somewhere, don't download it. If you can't afford it, just be tough and don't download it either. Maybe if enough people don't buy because they can't afford, maybe the industry will recognize that and do something about it. Doubtful, but in any case, it's your money, and you shouldn't allow people to sucker you into spending it on something you can't afford. But that's not an excuse to try to circumvent the system, either.