The public opinion on filesharing

I am sure that most of you, especially the youth, has heard about downloading and file sharing.
This is something that all of a sudden has blown up in the media and hit the older generation, because this has been a well known phenomenon among the younger generation.
The basics are: You have bought/received/stolen a CD, you rip it on to your computer, you copy the files you just ripped, and upload them to the internet. Then, people from all around the world can enjoy the music (/movie/game) you have paid for, for free! Isn't that neat? Technically, you are not stealing, as many would say. Let's say your friend just bought a dancing monkey, then he puts it in his cloning machine, clones it, and gives the clone to you, did you steal anything? No you did not, you just didn't pay for it, because he did not sell it to you either. That are the basics of file sharing. This does make it a lot harder for artists to make money off music, in my opinion they make most off live shows anyway. Is this something we should stop? Can we even hope stop it at all? Is this just like the machines taking over for the workers in the factories in the 18oo's? What thoughts do you make up about file sharing, illegal file sharing, as it is called.

I have actually not yet taken a stand to this, but I do download music, games, movies and programs, quite often actually. I just know that I am not hurting anyone, and the police have more serious business to take care of. I rarely buy CDs, when I do, it is mostly because the album has a more personal value. If it is just for the music, I download it. This may all sound morally wrong, but there are still a lot of people buying CDs, I do to occasionally. I also think that if not everybody does this, it can work out, but that is not a very good argument of course. I hope that there will be an agreement about this someday, until then I am going to continue downloading.
- Peace out