It diminishes the weight of their argument for legislative action, when the default is to take no action. The fact that illegal activity is occurring is not, o

It diminishes the weight of their argument for legislative action, when the default is to take no action. The fact that illegal activity is occurring is not, on its own, sufficient justification to put extra time, money or legislation into fighting it. Here in the UK, where it's illegal to rip CDs onto an iPod, millions of people do anyway [[citation needed]], but not even the music industry cares. When all the labels were doing was filing private copyright infringement suits against individuals, they didn't need any justification besides being legally in the right. But now they're lobbying for legislative support in enforcing their copyright. They're arguing that a) the prevalence of file-sharing is harming artists, and b) harming artists harms society, and therefore c) state-backed enforcement for their infringement claims will benefit society. b) is the part of the argument that copyright reform proponents like to attack, but a) is just as important to the argument. The figures in TFA seem to show that music industry revenues grew over the last four years, and that artist revenues grew even more. If so, that puts a serious dent in the claim that file-sharing harms artists, and therefore in the argument for state action.