By your argument, embezzlement and tax fraud and retail theft don't exist either. Just because a loss isn't fatal to an industry doesn't mean it has no effect.

Both are not one company. They are multiple companies working together. They didn't go out of business because they mostly changed with the new trends (Songs can now be purchased for 99 cents and streamed, etc).

"The MPAA is just greedy"

Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black. The MPAA may be greedy, but the hordes of people taking music and giving excuse after excuse as to why they shouldn't have to pay for it is pure greed (and entitlement).

"they are the ones stealing from artists:"

Sigh. I'm tired of hearing this. Artists have many ways to promote their stuff online. They don't have to sign a contract, but they choose to.

It's never been easy to make money as an artist...and piracy makes it even more difficult (especially when you don't have the backing of a major label).

I guess they don't deserve to make a living...and instead entertain you to your exact specifications.

I don't know. If you want to separate 'greed' and 'entitlement' I would say that someone pirating a dozen movies is certainly full of entitlement but I wouldn't say they're any greedier than the person that buys the same dozen movies.

Which is exactly the point: why should we pay them any credence when they attack the Internet or claim that new technologies will kill them, when all they need is an iota of creativity to figure out how to remain profitable as the realities of the market change?

"The MPAA may be greedy, but the hordes of people taking music and giving excuse after excuse as to why they shouldn't have to pay for it is pure greed (and entitlement)."

It is not really on the same level. On the one hand, you have people (mostly teenagers and college students) who want immediate gratification and do not have terribly much money available, who are getting their entertainment in the most convenient form available to them. On the other hand, you have people who could have a comfortable retirement at any time, who are engaged in a coordinated and well-planned strategy to extract that maximum amount of money possible from every conceivable source of revenue, who routinely bribe politicians into passing laws that promote their business interests, and who have been working for many years to destroy the most important communications tool ever developed in order to avoid having to change an immensely profitable business.

Really though, the greed argument is silly. We expect corporations to be greedy; the purpose of a business is to make money, not to be nice, and we accepted that fact long ago. Unfortunately, there is this weird expectation that individual computer users are supposed to be thinking about copyrights before they perform one of the most basic computing tasks possible. Copyright was never designed to be a form of property, and there is no way for a system that requires a judge to decide what is or is not a violation to be applied en masse. If we want to continue to use copyrights to ensure the availability of and to promote the progress of art (let's not kid ourselves about science -- scientists do not need copyrights to ensure their access to published work in this day and age, and copyrights now serve only to restrict access to scientific research), we need to reform the entire system: copyright violations need to be treated like parking violations, with a small but still annoying fine that must be paid whenever a person is caught. Even the MPAA realizes that the lengthy court proceedings needed to decide copyright cases are just not appropriate for the case of downloading; why do you think they spend so much money and effort on DRM?

"They don't have to sign a contract, but they choose to."

The problem is not just bad contracts; the movie industry is notorious for its deceptive accounting tactics, which are designed to deprive artists who signed seemingly good contracts of the money they are entitled to. We are talking about a deliberate effort to avoid paying actors, scriptwriters, and others involved in the creative part of creating a movie their share of the profits by claiming there was no profit, that the movie was actually a loss, by siphoning enormous amounts of money into shell companies for nebulous services. Sure, the big-name actors are not the ones who suffer, because their agents know better than to sign a contract that promises a share in the profit; they get contracts that promise a share of the revenue.

The MPAA cannot be taken seriously when they claim that downloaders are the reason up-and-coming artists and actors are making so little money while they continue to engage in that sort of accounting practice. It is difficult to make the case that every downloader would have paid full price had they not downloaded the movie; it is not difficult to show that artists lose money when movie studios lie about the profitability of a movie. Hollywood accounting predates downloading and even home taping by many years; artists suffered as much before as they do now, and they are suffering for the same reasons.