Illegal Downloading is Killing Home Taping

Over the last few years it seems that illegal downloading has found its place within the wider world of the music business.  At a time when the music industry itself seems to be in decline, maybe it is fitting that more consumers of music are taking that path.  We are told that this decreases the earnings of the artists, funds terrorism and provides them with fewer opportunities to continue their careers.
Of course people like Madonna, Take That, or indeed Robbie Williams have no such worries when it comes to their profits, after all they have had long enough to become wealthier than us mere mortals can hope to. This is also bolstered by the record companies paying out unnecessary advances to people such as Robbie Williams.
In the same way that warnings on cigarette packets are designed to ward people away from smoking, vinyl LPs carried a skull & cross bones on the backs of the covers; this wasn’t a warning that pirates might be listening to your record collection, although Adam Ant did warn of stealing it in his song Stand and Deliver: the warning was to inform us consumers that ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’.  By the same token, we are now informed that illegal downloading is just as damaging. I suppose now the prosecutors are the Adam Ant in question! 
I put it to the music industry ‘jury’ that if such practices are so illegal why, thirty years ago, were blank audio cassettes available, and also, why tape machines were sold with a ‘Record’ button.  Surely the companies making such products weren’t under the false impression that no-one would use the function or that it was there for merely decorative reasons: seriously, how many people were using these machines just to record their voices onto?  
The main difference (and an obvious one at that) between home taping and illegal downloading was that people had no way of facilitating the distribution of copied recordings; plus the fact that the recordings could not be accessed remotely. 
Home taping was NOT killing music thirty years ago, just as downloading isn’t killing music now.  If anything, it was and still is, keeping it alive. Record companies are just taking the fun out of sharing it!
The only thing worse than being prosecuted for downloading music from the internet is the knowledge that pirates could be selling illegal copies of Jedward albums to unsuspecting kids, and making money from them; if that’s the case, let them carry on I say.