Didn't the vinyl (and later cd) bootleg industry exist to becasue of additional fan demand? No one bought boots instead of legit recordings. You either bought just the legit albums or, if you knew where to get them, you bought both. Right?

Meanwhile along side that there was the pirate industry where knock-offs of legit products were sold in lieu of the real thing.

Setting aside the issue of whether an artist has the right to control people's access to warts-and-all material, there is a huge difference between say the torrents of live shows, studio outtakes and deleted material and the naked sharing of records that are readily commercially available. The former belongs in the realm of the old style bootlegger and the other is a digital ram-raid. If the music is available for sale there is absolutely no cultural, social, economic or political argument for sharing it in this way unless the rights owners or artist (if different) give their explicit permission.

I never bought the home taping is killing music argument but there is a difference surely between someone taking an album that they have purchased and copying it for a friend or including a track or two on a mix tape and the same person taking the same recording and sharing it with everyone on the planet who can be assed to click "save as"?

At least with Torrent sites you do get some measurable sense of responsibility among a closed community of member collectors. The wider world of illegal downloading is more like someone repeatedly driving a 4 x 4 into the window of HMV and saying "take what you like" .