This argument just doesn’t work. There is no “gap” in the business model. I can go to Amazon or turn on ITunes and legally buy a song. Or I can go to a P2P site and steal one. There are completely legal alternatives to this. It’s akin to saying that because people shoplift at a grocery store that the grocer must be doing something wrong.
Mama used to work at Wal-Mart and a large number of the shoplifters caught there had the money to pay for what they stole – they just didnt think they ought to have to pay for it for one reason or another.
And for all of you who think the Chinese ought to be allowed to sell cheap knock-offs of legal products at lower prices, are you the same people who are screaming about all your jobs being moved over to China and given to people who make cheap knockoff versions of what you used to make, and sell them at Wal-Mart?
You’re converging a few separate issues here-so let me clarify a few points
Issue 1: Is music/media piracy wrong?
Yes, of course- I’ve never said otherwise.
Issue 2: Why does it happen?
There are two issues here- individual users who download or copy media for personal use and to share with friends or on a P2P network, and organized piracy organizations like those in russia and parts of asia who mass produce and sell their wares.
These groups could also be grouped as those who don’t make money from piracy and those who do.
The first group, individuals who don’t make money, usually download and share pirated media because primarily of they think it doesn’t matter, because they are ignorant of the moral issues, because they can’t pay but feel entitled to what they want, because they feel entitled to free stuff even though they can pay, because they want to “stick it” to big companies that make lots of money. They might also claim that they want the media in a different format than is commercially available, or that they cannot otherwise purchase the product in their area.
The second group, those who earn money off of media piracy, mass produce and distribute the pirated media for the purpose of selling in places where their activities are not closely monitored, to people who either cannot afford the genuine product, cannot otherwise get access to the genuine product because of government restrictions or poor market saturation, or cannot access the genuine product in a format they desire- such as a non-region specific format (for dvds), a digital copy, or an outdated format
All of these reasons, as well as whatever other reasons I haven’t thought of, are morally unacceptable.
I do not, however, have any moral problem with a person who makes copies of media they have purchased if they are doing so only for personal use- putting a cd or dvd on their ipod, computer, making a copy for their car, etc. They have already purchased the product, and are not providing the product to anyone else.
Issue 3: What can the injured party do about this?
It seems that your suggestions are limited to one avenue- The injured parties should demand that the taxpayers supply sufficient law enforcement and judicial powers to enable them to lash out and exact justice from the evildoers in the form of jail time and huge financial payouts. This method is expensive, timely, and its success is debatable. Furthermore, it has the potential to cause injury to unwitting individuals who are caught in the middle- for example, the practice of assessing incredibly high financial consequences on individual users has damaged the general public’s appreciation for the moral authority of the industry. Fining people 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars for putting a digital copy of a song on the internet, especially when they were not motivated by personal gain, is disproportionate to the crime committed, and is itself an injustice.
What I am suggesting is that the industry take a pro-active approach to this problem by examining the reasons why their products are being pirated, determine whether they can proactively reduce the frequency of media piracy by providing consumers with legal alternatives to piracy which will achieve their desired goal, and adjust their business model to better accommodate the developing market. This is already happening in some ways- the most obvious example being the drastic price drops on most cd’s and dvd’s, but might also include the “digital copy” option being offered with many retail dvds, subscription based music services, or artist generated experiments such as when Radiohead released their cd for free on the internet before they released the retail copy.
At the more radical end of this line of thought, companies could accept that those organized piracy outfits, who are motivated only by personal gain, have obviously identified an untapped market of willing consumers who, for whatever reason, are willing and able to buy the product from them. Obviously, these media pirates are selling their wares to consumers somewhere- no matter how you slice it, that’s an untapped market that the legitimate media businesses have not accessed. It would be in their best interests to figure out why they have not accessed that market of consumers, and find ways to enter into that market. It may just be that the most effective and efficient inroad to that market is to incorporate and legitimize the piracy outfits.
npatrol: 
But I just went through replies and noticed mention of “music piracy”…Color me nervous -