Quote:
Originally Posted by
Blameless 
Piracy is the
theft of control over distribution, not the theft of the product itself.
Best post in the whole thread, and I haven't even read the whole thread. On a related note, knocking these guys down doesn't really do much, since they're too close to the bottom of the food chain. The true targets should be those who get hold of a film before it's even hit the big screen - but that means going after the studios, and Hollywood isn't going to police itself now is it?
If you don't believe me, look
here. It's a really good read from 2005. I can't imagine (*cough*) that much has changed, since the MPAA has always targeted the wrong people.
Quick quote (emphasis added):
Quote:
Once a file is posted to a topsite, it starts a rapid descent through wider and wider levels of an invisible network, multiplying exponentially along the way. At each step, more and more pirates pitch in to keep the avalanche tumbling downward. Finally, thousands, perhaps millions, of copies - all the progeny of that original file - spill into the public peer-to-peer networks: Kazaa, LimeWire, Morpheus. Without this duplication and distribution structure providing content, the P2P networks would run dry. (BitTorrent, a faster and more efficient type of P2P file-sharing, is an exception. But at present there are far fewer BitTorrent users.)
It's a commonly held belief that P2P is about sharing files. It's an appealing, democratic notion: Consumers rip the movies and music they buy and post them online. But that's not quite how it works.
In reality, the number of files on the Net ripped from store-bought CDs, DVDs, and videogames is statistically negligible. People don't share what they buy; they share what is already being shared - the countless descendants of a single "Adam and Eve" file. Even this is probably stolen; pirates have infiltrated the entertainment industry and usually obtain and rip content long before the public ever has a chance to buy it.
