Speaking as an amateur musician aspiring to be a professional musician, I think that artists should be compensated for their works, whether that be music or something else. However, I believe that the exchange of ideas and information should be a relatively free process, and draconian copyright laws only do damage to art and don't help anyone but the executives at the very top of the chain who I have less than zero respect for. Groups like the MPAA and RIAA are several orders of magnitude more loathsome than someone who downloads a few movies off of the internet. So I don't see pirating as good or bad. There's more than one way to view this ethically. People pirating stuff has plenty of positive and negative effects.
Yup. I think that attitude is common in people involved in creative work. As someone who pays money for things I support and as someone who is actively involved in music performance, I have no issue with people sharing my work for free (heck, I mostly do that anyway) and suspect that record company execs are far more threatening to musicians than any pirate is.
I just wanna let people hear me play. How they do it or what the laws say about it, I'm not that concerned about. I do think copyright law serves to hinder the process of information exchange and probably only benefits a small group of businessmen in the current environment.
Of course I'm not at all famous so it's kind of beside the point. Record companies aren't beating down my door to sign me. But there's plenty of examples of famous musicians who are on record as not taking tremendous issue with piracy of their work. Because deep down most musicians aren't in it (primarily) for the money, they're in it because they love performing and want to share their work with other people. And if they make some money too, hey sick.
As far as the morality of piracy goes, I think you should pay for what you want to support whenever you can. If you're poor and have to pirate things, sure okay. If you've got money, you should spend it on products that you like because you want the creators to be successful and maybe make more stuff like it in the future. "Pay what you want" pricing is helpful on that front and I'm glad more independent game devs and music acts are taking that route.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npHDxSvwCE0