Those of you calling downloading of music theft must have a different definition of theft than is used here in the UK. In the UK in order for something to be theft some thing has to be taken "With the intention of permanently depriving the other of it" otherwise it cannot be classed as theft in the UK. Since copying music does not deprive the owner of the music it cannot be classed as theft in the UK no matter how much the BPI wants it to.

[edit] Comparison to theft
Further information: Dowling v. United States (1985)
Copyright infringement is often equated with theft, for instance in the title of the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997, but differs in certain respects.

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 (for the purpose of the case) constitute stolen property, and writing:

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.' ...
The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over the copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use. While one may colloquially link infringement with some general notion of wrongful appropriation, infringement plainly implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

—Dowling v. United States , 473 U.S. 207, pp. 217–218
The key distinction generally drawn, as indicated above, is that while copyright infringement may (or may not) cause economic loss to the copyright holder, as theft does, it does not appropriate a physical object, nor deprive the copyright holder of the use of the copyright. That information can be replicated without destroying an original is an old observation,[56] and a cornerstone of intellectual property law. In economic terms, information is not a rival good; this has led some to argue that it is very different in character, and that laws for physical property and intellectual property should be very different.[57]

A British Government's report, Digital Britain, characterizes online piracy as a form of theft: "Unlawful downloading or uploading, whether via peer-to-peer sites or other means, is effectively a civil form of theft."[58]