[andrewb]

It's certainly not stealing. If you download a music file, the owner still has the original, theft is when someone takes your TV and you then can't watch it. It is a breach of copyright though.

I personally have a huge thing over the way the music industry (through the name RIAA) pursues its 'goal'. Firstly, they seem to think that if you wern't able to download an album, then you would buy it. Which is COMPLETELY wrong.

A lot of people download music rather than buying it, true. However, if they couldn't download music im 100% sure many of them wouldn't be buying all those albums they have downloaded. So the music industry makes up a lot of its figures when they talk about how much has been 'stolen'.

I'll buy independent artists music, I hate buying music from major record labels, a very small percent goes back to the artist and the music labels back people like the RIAA who pursue websites like allofmp3.com who are completely legal in Russia, the RIAA is trying to implement American law in Russia, its stupid.

Another thing is DRM, you can download music legally, but its full of technology stopping you from putting the music YOU purchased on to cd's, or your mp3 player, or for example only letting you copy it a few times.