Oh, so you care about the artist?

I get frequent complaints about how file sharing is theft (it's not). But a sizable proportion of the people who complain about file sharing say  it hurts recording artists and therefore it's evil.  This piece is for them:

You're pro-artists?  You want to help them?  If you really want to help your artist, share his music and send him the money directly so he can pay for marketing, recording and other expenses of future albums.  If you send him $15, you will be giving him thirty times the amount of money that the record exec pays him for each album.

But if you don't do that, and instead you rend your garments, call yourself righteous, foam at the mouth, accuse file sharers of woe and evil, and then buy an album that pays the artist at best 50 cents, we can dismiss you for what you are: an authoritarian hypocrite who looks at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye yet pays no attention to the plank in your own.

Oh, you care about the artist?  Great, then what are you doing for your favorite artist?  If you're doing something more than giving him fifty cents and his record exec five dollars, fantastic.  But if you don't, shut the fuck up, because you don't really care.