[That Guy]

a lot of bands are now renting out the venues they play in so they can take the concession money too... and a lot of them are also dumping their lighting rigs and just hiring it out to a random contractor from whatever city there in and renting equipment. they can tour two weeks a year and make more than you or I would in 3 years, so I'm not sure piracy is a huge personal concern economically.

that said - my parent's have cable - I don't (and haven't since 2003) - yet I have a slingbox in their home and can watch their cable 24/7 365 anywhere in the world for free (well, the box was $60) - is that pirating TV, cause it's perfectly legal (and good luck finding another way to watch a skins game in kyrgyzstan). I skip the commercials too... evil.

I don't think either of those points is really on topic :/ but piracy and unlimited free duplication is kind of a weird concept to a legal system built on physical ownership of things. and being responsible for real time managment of a million concurrent users is beyond feasible. Someone can anonymously post nazi propaganda on youtube and their held to the same legal responsibility as if they posted and endorsed it (as proposed and interpreted) - the current system is to notify them and then they'll have it removed, which seems much more fair than blacking out the site or forcing us to keep a running list of ip addresses (then everyone could just go to ://you.tube/ and get redirected - stupidity averted!.

If you want to stop piracy, start with education. if you blanket block piratebay, people will just proxy around it. our own government has created a program called triangle specifically designed to share files past firewalls (to spread propaganda into china), and of course, a tool being a tool, kids use it at school to pass mp3s around their schools firewall.

and if you want a copy of that program, email VoA.