File Sharing!

First I will address the series of scenarios that you provided and then I'll tell you a little bit more about my personal ethics. So, downloading a song that I don't own from a major label artist, well I do think that this is ok. I am one of the people who believes that if they make quite a bit of money already and if they really won't suffer financially from giving it for free then they should be able to let listeners download their art. Now downloading from a struggling artist I think is wrong, I believe that a lot of new bands struggle because people are able to download music like they do today and they end up making no profit. Some people say that struggling bands like to just share their music anyway, I have no proof of this but if that is true then that could almost be a means for justification, there are many other factors though of course. Downloading a copy of a song I already own, I think that this is ok, if it is something i've already paid for then why not? This doesn't stop people who haven't paid for it from doing it though. Shoplifting is obviously very wrong, and I wouldn't ever say that it was ok because not only are you stealing from the artist but you're stealing from the shop owner as well. But I can definitely see the relation to downloading a whole CD for free. I don't think its ok to download a song and if you like it you'll buy the CD, because there is no guarantee that you will and plus you can usually listen to part of a song on a website advertising for the CD anyway. Copying a CD from a friend, I think that this is ok, because it has been paid for and it is better than the both of you just downloading it from the Internet, so maybe its the lesser of two evils? I think that making music you own available to your friends as well as publicly available is ok too, because if you view music as art then why should restrictions be put on whether or not it can be shared? I mean are we going to have to take all of the pictures of paintings off of the Internet too? Should an artist get paid money for every time that someone looks at their painting on their website? I know that hearing and seeing is different, but art is art in my opinion. Now me personally, I didn't even own an ipod until a couple of months ago when my CD player broke and I've tried to download songs but I'm just not very good at it and i've probably only downloaded about 2 and a half songs in my whole lifetime. But I did get all of my songs that are on my ipod from a friend, and they were from CDs that were burned onto his computer, so i'm not sure which category that puts me in. But I think one of the main problems lies in the fact that most people don't realize what they are doing, they don't understand that they are in fact stealing by definition. Its easier to do it because all you have to do it click you mouse and there is nothing else to think about. Nobody really takes the time to think about the ethics of it, they just want instant gratification.