>There is a big difference.
>If I steal your cow you don't have it anymore. You can't sell
>it, you can't get milk from it, you can't get meat from it.

but if i had a cow, and every morning before i could get the cows milked, 10-20 ppl came in and milked the animal dry before i had a chance to get near her, any profits i could make would be lost for the day. if it happened every single day, id be even more fucked. which is more or less what happens with music.

>If I download your album i've just made a copy. You still have
>the music. The only thing that is lost is a -potential- sale.

no it is a sale lost. before, unless someone copied an album for you, or you borrowed it from a library, you couldnt hear it. now you can hear a more or less perfect copy and dont have to buy it. even if you didnt like it, before you would prob have had to buy it (yeah you could listen to it on a listening station at tower or hmv but that takes time - most people would just hand over the cash). now you dont. so it essentially is a lost sale.

>I'm not saying downloading music isn't wrong. But copyright
>infringement is not theft.

sure. its just old fashioned music bootlegging really (where it WAS a lost sale, as people would be shelling out cash for a tape or cd) updated for the free culture of the web, but without any costs involved. before people wanted shit for cheap (and bootleggers would have to charge for the cost of the copies they made), now they want it for free.