Hey what if you have no intentions on buying it and will probably never listen to it, is it ok then? LOL... Its a bad idea to dl stuff you don't own but people will do it, I figure with itunes and every song at my fingertips for less than .99 whats the point, plus I get so many itunes gift cards it would not make sense for me to "steal" music... How many of the people that steal music would have bought it? Taylor Swift may have been able to buy 2 mansions instead of,,,,, oohhh wait...
And while you most likely will never be convicted with a crime like this and owning a copy already is a grey {ethically} area, would you sneak back in a theater to watch a movie you already paid to see? Would you rape a hooker you already paid to be with the day before?
I guess if I had a copy of a disc, and didn't have a way to get that on my ipod, and it wasn't available on itunes, and the only place I could get it on my ipod was one of them sites, and I just had to have it on my ipod, I would do it... But that is an obscure perfect storm of circumstances to satisfy before I would bother, I have purchased A LOT of music that I own on cd, just because I don't want to take the time to take it from a cd to ipod... I have bought 2 copies of a cd that I really liked if I wanted one in my house and one in my truck {yeas ago before ipods}, with your friends thought process I should have just walked back in the store and put the other copy under my jacket, or they should make it so you can buy more copies for the price of a disc and jacket....
It all comes down to if you can sleep at night, sure some people do or don't do things for fear of legal punishment, but much more important than that is if you can live with your self, I learned this when I was younger, a kid from the town where I grew up DUI'd his car and killed his friend, he was under 18 and back then the laws were different and he basically got no punishment, they could only take his licence until he was 18, he killed himself 3 months after the incident and left a note saying he couldn't go on living knowing what he had done.... When I heard the entire story {small town, my parents and his were close, but we were different ages so not really a friend of mine, I had been in his company many many times, but he was 4 years older than me and at that age it may as well be 50 years} it hit me, the law means nothing, they can cage you in some cases kill you {this is rare and getting more rare unless you are in Texas}, but the real punishment is if you can live with your actions, so if stealing music doesn't cause you any internal conflict, then knock yourself out, I'm not god {I don't think} and I won't judge you...