"You are using these services (the playing of music in this case) without paying for it, you are stealing their services. And in that case, it could be argued t

"You are using these services (the playing of music in this case) without paying for it, you are stealing their services. And in that case, it could be argued that 17k downloads equals 17k counts of theft." Following that logic, I've just robbed Beethoven's corpse by listening to Moonlight Sonata. This line of argument fails because using information doesn't prevent others from doing the same.