It's not the public.   It's corporate agencies, e.g. The Orchard (owned by Sony), who are taking whole albums and circulating them and using this to get advertising, even though they do not own the rights to this material. It's the separate digital rights and synchronising rights that they are stealing.

The artists are being ripped off, the songwriters are being ripped off. Millions of songs are involved, and whilst some artists have done deals with these parasites, others have not and are being screwed by Youtube and these parties.   It's not about members of the public, it's about corporate theft!