I believe that it is completely ridiculous to have this artificial construct of scarcity to try and increase the marginal cost for something that inherently has no scarcity: the marginal cost for a digital download is zero.

Obviously if you replace paying the artist money for music with an illegal download you are doing a disservice to the author and the author's distribution company. If you weren't going to pay the author anything though, you can only benefit him, assuming you like the author's work enough to tell friends and/or attend live performances. Sure, it's better for the artist to get paid, but there is a distinction between doing a disservice and being morally wrong and the use of the word steal is an attempt to equate copyright violation with being morally wrong.

In the end, illegal downloads are inevitable. It's impossible to entirely stop; all you can do is try and make the legal downloads as convenient and practical as possible (like Amazon's service). This is already changing the business model for artists. Live shows and packaging and merchandise become more important than ever.

There's an analogous situation with software: desktop software is easily crackable but SaaS is often impossible to copyright violate. Most of the developers here are doing SaaS and they will indeed get paid for their work.