Yeah I wonder the same thing. When I talk to people about this (or think about it myself) the logic tends to be a bit circular. (That is a bit of a warning for the following meandering)
When I download 6 different covers of "Wish you were here", I think 'wow, this is great...' and at the same time feel a twinge of something not quite approaching guilt... I should pay someone for their work - just maybe not the RIAA.
It is amazing to see the amount of stuff available on Gnutella-type sharing networks. Whole programs with cracks, Full length movies. Plenty of tech books. Whole albums, etc.
THe cassette analogy breaks down with the sheer volume of file-sharing. When you made or got a cassette the quality was noticably lower than an lp so if you really liked the music you would go out and get the real thing. With file sharing (if you have the bandwidth) you can find the actual .wav files - thus less of a reason to get the real thing. It is more like pressing albums and leaving them on your front stoop for anyone to pick up...
Discussions of this issue range from the cynical 'everybody-does-it' to the sactimonious to the self indignant...
But there is an enormous dollop of hypocracy on the RIAA side. I found the following Wired article humorous (Sen. Orrin Hatch is calling for software that would fry the file sharing computers - but an astute web-saavy individual found that the souce code on Hatch's website contained javascripts that were lifted from another company):
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html
I'm not a lawyer but it seems that IP law is a very active area at the moment. I think much of the discussion of file sharing is clouded by issues that have an elective affinity to it. Overly restrictive patent applications and the Open Source / Closed source debates are examples.
There is an interesting article in the New Yorker on how patent and IP law is used in a predatory way:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030714ta_talk_surowie...
The legitimacy and increasing popularity of Open Source Software is a strong counter tendency (despite the SCO- Linux suit). Open Source has effectively proven that the development of free software tools (ie Linux Apache Perl Postgresql etc...) prospers and has competitive advantages over Closed source (Microsoft, etc).
So in this environment in which Open Source and other challenges to more traditional notions of IP, file sharing becomes less heinous.
Most of the people I talk to about this feel at least some level of discomfort and nobody I know has come up with an excellent argument for the legitemacy of file sharing... But we are talking about an industry that has been bloated and behind the times ffor years. I feel about as bad for the large music companies as I did for PanAm or TWA. If an entire industry is unable to deal with technological change and come up with a viable business model, then it should go the way of the dinosaurs - not be propped up by Orin Hatch and his ilk.
I think this will spawn a new kind of music service (and you see examples like the Apple music thing or a Sirius-style satellite programming) while the RIAA is twiddling around with self-destructing files and lawsuits...
