After reading the posts and seeing this:
At any given point about 20% of the music every recorded is available legally. The rest is locked away by the labels depriving the creators of a potential source of income, the fans of the music they want, while creating a false market for the band "d'jour."
All I have to say is this. The so-called taxes and won lawsuit money goes to the labels that publish the artists work. The artists themselves get nothing. Secondly, the false market created causes such CDs to be very costly, thus actually making people go to the Internet for cheaper or free music. Thirdly, due to the false market, there is demand created. This also increases the prices and is a big profit for the labels. The artists do not get any advantage from these. (Think in terms of the Oil Market, low supply and high demand causes the oil prices to be high and the labels as the OPAC, having a monopoly over the market) Forthly, the talk about d/l music from the net makes artists not to earn money is complete BS, because the labels themselves earn the money from CD sales and not the artists. Fith, the labels and the RIAA come up with all these brainwashing BS to protect their profits so that people don't see red at the stock markets. (The rest in the stock markets are all economics and gibberish only for economists not us techs). Ok end of rant.