Well as long as the music, tv and movie industries are pigheaded and stuck in the 20th century, then download away in my opinion. They are the masters of their own doom.
My reasoning is simple. All the 3 industries have failed to keep up with the movement of technology. Why should I have to wait weeks and months if not years to see the next episode of my favourite tv show or new movie? This fact contributes to a huge portion of the downloading, especially on the TV side.
This is because of "rights", an archaic method to exploit more money out of people world wide. The "rights" issue was best exemplified during the last world cup in football. In Europe the main Danish tv channel has an encrypted version of its channels for expats living abroad (at an insane premium btw). But when it came to the world cup matches, they had to block the channel because they did not have the "rights" to send to Spain, France and others.. to Danish citizens, and only Danish citizens can get the channel (need passport to get the card). Now, you probally think, so what.... well the problem with this, is that the BBC, Spanish TV, German TV and many others, sent all the matches in the clear (non encrypted) for everyone to see. You could even watch some matches online at FIFA.com. This is just one example in a web of stupidity by the TV and Movie producers/releaser world wide.
It use to be that a movie was first released in the US, then Asia and then months later in Europe. Now days, a lot of blockbusters are released on the same day in most major markets, to avoid the piracy. But still, studios refuse to do so, and then complain when you can get a pirated version online before the premiere in the US. On top of that, some studios complain despite releasing the movie in Asia and Russia first, the world capital of pirates. And of course they provide no methods of being able to download or view the movies online at all.......... which does not help the situation either. They want us to buy DVDs after all.
Another idiotic moronic system is the DVD region codes. Not only is it anti competitive and in principle anti free market, it is acutally working against the studios! In today's market, one of the first regions to get DVDs is Region 5..... that is Russia, the worlds biggest releaser of pirated movies in DVD quality. We can get online, a Region 5 DVD rip of any movie (almost) before it is released on DVD in the US! And the movie companies complain...For example, a DVD region 5 version of "The day the earth stood still" was just released on the web a few days ago... the US DVD is out April 7th. See the idiotic nature of the system?
Look at TV. Most major TV shows (non reality) are made in the US. But because of the way the system is for the most part, the release of new episodes happens in the US first, and if we are lucky we get it the same week over here in Europe, but mostly its weeks if not months and years after. We have no possibility to download or access new US shows legally, because of the rights issue, but the technology is there.. yet the US tv companies refuse to give access to non Americans to download legally the content. And then they complain we download and watch illegal copies.... If I could pay a few bucks to watch my favourite tv shows hours after it airs in the US or even at the same time, I would. But I cant.
Now to compound the idiotic ways of TV channels, we have the case of Stargate SG1. For years, yes years, the pattern was the first half of the season was released in the US, with the rest of the world following the same week or week after.. no biggie often. Now, the Sci Fi channel held an SG1 winter break from mid December every year, but guess what... the Canadian and UK channels did not. They kept sending the episodes, so the latter half of the season was often OVER before American's got it on their screens. Of course American's loved to download the last half of the season. Even a few years, the SG1 season was started months before in Canada so when it finaly was aired in the US and UK, the Canadian's was several episodes in, and of course they were all over the net.... and TV channels complain................
The same goes for BSG btw.. during season 1 and 2, the UK's Sky TV aired new episodes before the US for a brief period.
On the music side, the industry took almost a decade to figure out that people liked having the ability of downloading, and that the industries pricing was insane. Now the game is up, and they are far far too late out of the "starting blocks" to do anything about the illegal downloads. On top of that they are only now, years after they finally accepted downloads (legally), they are now figuring out that having DRM systems suck and are counter productive.
Is this all stealing? yes, but when you leave the freaking door unlocked and big sign saying "come take my stuff because my security system is broken" then frankly I have no sympathy what so ever.