Hmm given a task at hand e.g. making $ I would have to guess Larry "is smart beyond my imagination" applies here given he is one of world's 10 richest people.

Dah it's called job security :)

You forgot an even more obvious angle "Who payed for the Deloitte study" "With more than 2,500 oil and gas professionals worldwide, Deloitte’s Oil & Gas practice is focused on providing audit and enterprise risk services, tax services, consulting services and financial advisory services to companies in all segments of the oil and gas industry." Seams fairly key sector for them.

Hmm reminds me of an old soviet joke the gist of which was A person from US trying to convince someone from USSR that there is no freedom of speech in USSR -In US a person can call a president an "idiot" with no repercussions -It same here replies the dude from USSR anyone can call US president an "idiot" with no repercussions

The poster is all concerned with "provably," I think he is not the one missing the point :) An example of project getting shot down primarily due to piracy concerns by investors would be great and that is were "provably" comes in :). Otherwise the scenario outlined in your post is merely an unconvincing theory. I can throw another " guess" that amount of money that industry spends on RIAA, DRM technologies and Legal departments dealing with non industrial piracy result in a loss comparable to properly accounted losses from piracy. By properly accounted I mean counting lost viable sale to piracy (e.g. a sale that could have occurred in a situation where there is "0" piracy).

Well IPad is obviously the highest profile device and while patent was filed in 2009 work on IPad has being going on at least since early 2009 including demos and deals with book/magazine publishers, prototypes manufactured by subcontractors etc. so there should be very large witness base to testify should it be needed.

of VPN/Proxy services :)

Hmm so the dude say stays in India and works for Wipro (def. saves US jobs and increases US tax revenue)

With some exceptions in the IT field people are far from being exploited e.g. in Ukraine as an example avg slry for developer is around 1500USD/month (amount after all the taxes) while it is obviously less then US considering cost of living and especially cost of medical care things are fairly equal.

The idea will not work and will result in US entities licensing "products"/IP from offshore entities.