I'm still confused.
Downloading music and moves IS NOT THE SAME as going to a store and stealing a physical copy.
I'm under the assumption that what drives the anti-P2P gestapo to sue, and make such bullshit claims such as "proof, we don't need proof, lulz" is they see pirating an album or film to be the same as that person stealing it physically, resulting in a loss of profit. Not so. YOU CANNOT PROVE that if Joe Pirate can't get the new Britney album on BitTorrent because the RIAA got their way, that he'd run into a Best Buy and shove one into his jacket instead, or even purchase it! Not 100% possible and therefore should not hold up as a legitimate argument in a court of law.
The thing that's really scary about this all of this is the fact that basically everyone on the Internet who engages in piracy isn't even doing so for monetary gain! Anti-piracy groups must be really successful at busting *REAL* pirate groups in places like Asia, because they're obsessed with targeting harmless Internet users who are swapping compressed audio and video that they don't even make a cent on!
It's so fucking pretentious. Turn the Internet into a virtual communist state, and I would STILL guarantee you that the music and movie industry continues to suffer. They put out nothing but crap over half the time. Since the mid-90's the public's interest in what they have to offer and how much money they're willing to spend on it all has been on the decline. This was long before mp3's went mainstream which in turn triggered the modern day Internet piracy phenomenon.
Does piracy have some kind of effect on sales? I'm sure. But how profound it is simply cannot be measured, and to sue people for hundreds of thousands of dollars over stealing and exchanging things that they don't make money on is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard in my life. How they go about doing this is even worse. It's like a group of policemen noticing ten different murders occuring in the same place, but only arresting two of the ten people who carried out the murders, just so they can make an example out of them. It's a... lazy/ineffective high school teacher giving a freshman in the classroom detention ideology. Seriously. A bunch of other people are acting just like him, but he's the only one the teacher wants to pick on, because he can. This is basically what the RIAA/MPAA and their goons do. And they GET AWAY WITH IT.
When you made mixtapes back in the day, or taped stuff off the radio or tv, and shared it with your friends/family, they didn't try to stop you. Because they couldn't. Fortunately, they couldn't track how many people at any given time were copying tapes, movies, and even CD's off of each other before the Internet changed everything. But now that they can invade your privacy and track you, they can. It's immoral and unethical and I hope the mindset of the RIAA/MPAA and related organizations crumbles to the ground. It holds NO PLACE in any truly free society.
