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At some point, it won't make sense to post these sorts of examples any more because it will just be common sense that bands can and do benefit from so-called "piracy," but every time we post one of these stories, we get people complaining that this couldn't possibly work for others. When a band is big, then it will never work for small artists. When they're small, it'll never work for big artists. Once we even had a commenter complain that it might work for big artists or small artists -- but it was the all important artists in the middle that it would never work for.

So, here we go again, with yet another example of a band that isn't worried about piracy. It's an award-winning acoustic folk duo out of the UK, called Show of Hands, where one of the members admits that one of the most popular ways that people find out about the band is when others share the band's music, and this often drives them to come out to shows and buy CDs as well. The band points out that "piracy" is a bad description of what happens:

You may call this process 'piracy' if you wish - for me it is an act of generosity and it both increases our audience size and record sales. And as I always say on the night - if you're going to do it anyway you may as well feel good about it! I believe the official term is 'viral marketing', and we depend utterly upon it.

Yet, if he listened to the RIAA or the IFPI, apparently, all this viral marketing that the band depends on would be "no different than common theft."

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