Copying is not stealing. If he stole the songs the band, store etc. would not have them to sell. He made two where there was one. It is simply not the same as stealing. His penalty ought to be to remunerate the lawful copyright owner the download price multiplied by the number of times he shared it.
>Copying is not stealing. If he stole the songs
>the band, store etc. would not have them to sell.
>He made two where there was one. It is simply not
>the same as stealing.
Looks like you may be right...
“Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as theft. In copyright law, infringement does not refer to theft of physical objects, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization.[6]
Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft, holding, for instance, in the United States Supreme Court case Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property and that “interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud.
The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright... ‘an infringer of the copyright.’” In the case of copyright infringement the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law is invaded, i.e. exclusive rights, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.[1]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Theft