He downloaded it, didnt pay for it, he was in the wrong and sadly got caught, if you steal you live with the fact that you might have to pay more in the long run.
Not sure about US Law, but in the UK its a slightly grey area regarding personal copy of something, supposedly its legal to make a copy for your own sake as you havnt bought the disc or the tape etc, you have bought the right/licence to own the song/movie/book/puter games/etc and use it within your lifetime for as long as you want. So technically that means you can make backup copies in case the original is destroyed. However, you cannot of course use those copies publicly or give them to friends/family, whether free or paid. Example would be that if you bought a CD of The Prodigy and copied it to tape to play back in the old system in your car, that is legal to do. However if you then lend that tape to a friend to listen to or copy then you are breaking the law.
Downloading/copying MP3's is not illegal if you own the song on another format already (tape/cd/vinyl) and can prove that, even if you do not have the tape anymore providing you can show a receipt that you bought it, then you are legal.
I dont d/l movies, i just buy them on DVD, sometimes if i hear part of a song on the radio and i'd like to listen to the rest i might d/l the song on kazaa so i can listen to the whole thing, if i like it i go out and buy the single or the album its on, if not then i delete...if i dont like it why keep it..lol
Due to a minor disability going out shopping and hanging around listening to music in the shops isnt something i can do easily, hence my d/l to see if i like the song/artist. Although thankfully a lot more artists now do websites with a song or two on a flash like setup.
If people didnt pirate so much then costs in shops/online stores would be cheaper, not necessarily by a lot, but enough that most people would be able to afford what they wanted. It due to piracy that things got so inflated, thankfully mass competition has driven things down a little. Im not a goody goody two shoes, i just dont mind rewarding the people who create something that makes me happy. I like the Steam idea of online content delivery with PC games, i think its very good, it takes the publishers out of the equation, and hopefully once the ties with them are cut then the content will become cheaper, even if only by a third it will be good
