the music industry’s losses

It is simply the excuse used by those who illegally download music to ease their consciences. They figure that it is ok to steal the music since they would not have bought the music anyway. In other words, if they could not steal it, they would not put it in their collection. Thus, the record companies would not see any extra revenue anyway, so what's the big deal if they illegally download it.

Bottom line, it is still stealing.

By the way, if you tag your questions "ESL" and "English" you will get less confusing answers. Someone tagged this "politics" and it may not be clear to others that you are asking for basic reading comprehension help to learn a foreign language and not starting a political discussion that you can't follow.



This is a unfulfilled hypothetical conditional statement (you don't need to know the term, I just use it in case your grammar books do) and the sentences can get confusing here because of how tenses are used so differently in such hypothetical conditional statements. For example, if you are talking about the future you use past, if you are talking about the past you use past perfect.

So here is the same statement, slightly rewritten for clarity, and in different tenses (just for illustrative purposes, the first one actually isn't an unfulfilled hypothetical anymore):

"If buying the music is the only way to get it, they will not buy it."

"If buying the music were the only way to get it, they would not have bought it."

If you want more detail about this structure, look here:

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conditional.htm

beautifully explained . That was very much helpful . I understand the concept now

That link is a terrible one to send anyone to, Robert. It is replete with errors.

I didn't fully peruse it so I'll take your word for it.