It's copyright infringement by you, the person who made and sent a copy, not by me who just received it. If you look at the lawsuits, they're all convicted because they uploaded, not because they downloaded.

No such thing follows from icebraining's logic.[1]

If you think otherwise, lay out explicitly how you think the two cases are similar.

[1]Err, unless you are Lady Gaga.

You never made a copy of the MP3 yourself — you just received one and stored it. Ditto for people who receive copies from MegaUpload.

Has anyone ever been convicted for just downloading MP3s?

Besides, there's obviously a difference between receiving a random essay from a person who claims to own the rights (that's obviously in their TOS), and asking to download an MP3 of some band. In the latter case, the downloader obviously knows the copy is illegal and it can be argued that (s)he's abetting the infringer.