Interesting questions you've asked, conflating a couple different issues, but worth flexing some thought to respond to, I think. 1. The $150,000 per song is a

Interesting questions you've asked, conflating a couple different issues, but worth flexing some thought to respond to, I think. 1. The $150,000 per song is a punishment amount, directly attributable to "willful infringement" which is, from my understanding, a pretty obvious bar to clear. Sharing a file on a mix CD and giving it to somebody for their birthday? Willful, but not really the intent of the law. Setting up a CD duplication shop and bootletting new releases to sell on street corners? That's the point of the very high dollar amount punishment. Society has basically determined that punishing infringement is supposed to cost a lot of money, so that would be a deterrent. 2. This is a completely fabricated problem, as not "every random artist" thinks their art is worth $150,000 per song until it's willfully used in an infringement format. Artists are pretty well aware that society thinks songs should basically be $0.99 to keep or very cheap to listen to through a retail/customer facing streaming service. However, if we substitute "every jackass record label" then you've got a much more valid point about the copyright system, because of how the record industry works. 3. Let's make a deal - we can abolish copyright on recorded music if you agree to abolish copyright on written computer code. After all, if you believe that the only time a musician should make money should come from performance, then I submit the only time a programmer or company should be paid for their software is during the hours it was created. I'm all for copyright reform - limiting the ability to sign away rights to "no value" middlemen / hucksters like record industry conglomorates & putting very short protections on the created works (lifetime of artist only, impossible to transfer to outside corporation for renewal beyond artist's lifetime), but going that extreme is not preferable. I think my phrasing about music vs. software is really rough, but it's a tempting argument to hash out - if you want to throw out my baby with the bathwater, then I'm going to make sure yours is going along for the ride as well.