Spence,
my response is in the same spirit,as I would offer to any unknown stranger who is about to get mugged at a street corner. I intervene, or at least try to.
Mugging (stealing) with a click of a mouse for personal financial gain (a 14,000 song collection to "start my own DJ business"), is no less a crime than putting a knife to somebodies throat. It also carries a max. penalty of 5 yrs imprisonment or $250K for each occurence. You do the math and multiply that by 14,000!
Of course, it's almost bizarre when the next thief offers to replace one stolen collection with her own 13,000 illegally gotten files.
Maybe you (and others) need to learn more about the United States Copyright Act (google!). Lastly, I professionally safeguard an intellectual property portfolio that thus far has required $60M to generate: I have no tolerance at all for IP theft. (And 14,000 songs is not like copying 500 songs for your own personal pleasure.) This is major, willful criminal energy in my books (and that of many lawyers) for personal gain.
Lastly, many musicians are trying to raise and feed a family (most of them are not superstars). Illegally copying and using these files deprives them of their hard work.
/Matthias
P.S.: I watched you going thru AFF, remember? Let me part with a final thought: "The End Never Justifies the Means!" This is in the same spirit as your opening sentence.
P.P.S.: I know what the license rights for copyrighted photography is: they start at $500 per photo for non-exclusive, very limited use. And that's the cheap end. Even if commercial exploitation of songs were only 1/10th of that, I highly doubt your friend could afford 14,000 ($700,000) of those!
