Messy Bru, Actually, it's copyright infringement. It isn't easily categorized as theft, either, as a 1985 decision by the supreme court in Dowling v United Stated determined.
That doesn't mean it's right to do it, but overloading words that mean something else entirely only emotionalizes the issue, and does nothing to actually address the situation.
Part of the problem IMHO, is the word 'copyright'. The implication being that all copying becomes infringement, which is not true. A more accurate term would be distributionright (although a bit unwieldy). What is protected by copyright is distribution, primarily, distribution for gain.
I have a great deal of respect for the concept of intellectual property, but the current legal environment surrounding it right now is somewhat over the top, including the overlong coverage periods that currently exist.
Although many in the current environment (especially the likes of the RIAA, etc.), would have us believe otherwise, there really is a fundamental difference between physical property and intellectual property. In fact, as Justice Blackmun noted in the above decision, "property interest protected by copyright is limited by the First Amendment interest in free expression and copyright's goal not to reward authors but to promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts".
Obviously, there is no first amendment protection for such actions as blatant online file distribution, and the like, but it is necessary to understand that there are levels of infringement, and levels of use that are not infringement, even if the copyright owner doesn't like it.
The biggest problem the RIAA has, IMHO, is not so much that the file sharing itself is such a major problem, it is that they truly fear losing their lucrative physical distribution method. They are also truly opposed to the concept of fair use, as they see it as undermining their desire to have you pay for every single use of a bit of content. As outlets like iTunes, and the like demonstrate, a lot of people are fine with paying for online distribution if the price is right, and if the content is not so restricted as to be virtually unusable.
Copyright infringement is illegal, and rightly so, but it is important to remember that we shouldn't cloud the issue with loaded and emotional phraseology, and we should also remember that the RIAA and their ilk are less interested in copyright infringement as an honestly legal issue, and are more interested in it as a mechanism for protecting (at all costs) what is rapidly becoming an outmoded and uneconomical business model.
