[ExistentialDisorder]

if an artist doesn't sell their album anymore, that's their right, as the creator of that album. there's many reasons that an album goes out of print. usually its because its dated and has lost its value in the eyes of its record label/company, making it more costly to keep producing, than it generates in sales. sometimes artists deliberately have their albums pulled due to their own decisions or personal reasons. sometimes they do it in order to deliberately make it difficult to obtain, in order to re-release it later, maybe as part of a collection. but that's a marketing gimic. whatever their reasons, its their material, under contract with whoever they hired to promote their work. which makes it their right to decide what is done with that material.

As long as its a legitimate copy of that used album, and not a bootleg you're buying from someone on amazon, then there's nothing wrong with it. and as long as whoever you're buying it from isn't keeping a copy of that same album, for themselves, (meaning, they copy the cd and then turn around and sell the original) then there's nothing wrong with it. the artist has already made their money on the original sale of that album. when someone on amazon sells you the original, they're selling their license to use it. which technically makes their keeping a self-generated copy of it also illegal. but that's getting down to nit-picky bullshit, and that sort of thing is generally projected and incorporated into the retail costs of cds.

Everything you download has a copyright that somebody owns. So when you download it, you're hurting the owner of that copyright, even tho it might just be a little bit. pocket change, if that. Unless that artist has created something with the intention of freely distributing it, that's one less sale he or she will make because you stole a copy of it from where ever you downloaded it, making you the one in the wrong. Even artists/musicians/etc that create stuff intentionally for free still have a legal right as its creator to decide where and how that material is distributed and can prosecute you if you decide to violate those guidelines.

Say some local band has a web site that they upload their songs to and allow anybody that registers at their site, or just visits their site, to download all their songs for free. That's their right. If you come along and decide to upload their content to your site and let anybody come along and download from you, and you haven't gotten that band's permission to do so, you're still violating their copyright. Chances are they wouldn't say shit, cause all you're really doing is promoting their material for them, giving them more exposure, but if they decided to, for whatever reason, maybe they just don't like you, or don't agree with the rest of the content on your site and don't want their name associated with it. they could take legal action against you, usually starting with something like a cease and decist order.

And yes, file sharing does help to promote the little guy, and usually those little guys know this, and come up with their own ways of letting their fans share their work so that their name and material spreads further.

As for the bigger names with bloated budgets, every song you steal from them is one less sale they have the legal right to make as the creator of that content, deflating their budget that much more. That concept is no different than me looking at you and saying you have a billion dollars, so if i sneak in and swife 50 grand, you'll never miss it, you've got a billion dollars, so what's the harm in that? it doesn't make it any less illegal.