Perhaps I am wrong - and feel free to correct me if you think I am - but I think that your response actually supports my point.

You originally said that all that was necessary was to offer streaming services to the masses at reasonable cost. I said that I think those are already present for a lot of people, giving examples like Netflix, but that the problem was that they could never compete with piracy unless something occurs to make that less 'perfect'.

Your response is that none of the services are good enough. Netflix is too expensive because it's a subscription - despite the fact that it's only $8/month. It also has to be available worldwide and work on every platform. Amazon is no good because its library is too small - despite the fact that, looking at Torrentfreak's list of the most pirated shows and films, Amazon has most of them.

I think this tends to illustrate my point. If what you want is something as good as Bittorrent then nothing is good enough, and nothing ever can be.

Incidentally Star Trek is already available through Amazon Instant Video, and one suspects that watching it means Paramount get a cut of Amazon's fee. I wonder, though: if we tested your theory by comparing the number of Star Trek fans who pirate the shows with the number who watch them through Amazon, would you really find that regular viewers opt to pay?

That's a nice collection of buzz-words, but what does it mean? What is an 'economic game-breaker'? Why is consistent enforcement extremely harmful to the economy? Why is only the marginal cost relevant, and not the cost of creation?

In pretty much any other area of business the option would be to compromise on what they want or the way they demand it. I know that sounds anti-consumer but it's not - it's the only way the industry can operate.

Legal methods to obtain content do exist, at least in many places - DVDs, broadcast/cable/sky TV, Netflix, Amazon videos, Lovefilm and so on. The days of piracy being the only online distribution method are, broadly speaking, over. Piracy remains popular not because there isn't a legal alternative, but because piracy lets you get whatever you want for free. That's the "way they demand" when you're talking about people used to pirating media: unlimited media, for no cost, with no consequences.

Legislation and legal action aren't antithetical to a move to digital distribution, they're a necessary part of it: the more people move to legal distribution methods the better the negotiating position of the distribution companies and the more shows become viable to offer. For legal online distributors to be able to compete with Bittorrent, though, there needs to be some disadvantage to BT - that disadvantage can be provided by legislation and legal action.

David Allen Green, Paul Chambers' solicitor, blogs for the New Statesman and under his own name at Jack of Kent and has written about the case a number of times. He has also discussed it on the Without Prejudice podcasts on a number of occasions, e.g. two days ago.

"Solution". But solution to what problem?

The problem here is:
I want x;
I don't want to pay for x.

That's not really a "problem". "Problem" suggests that it is something outside of you, imposed on you and that you have to find a way past. All we have here is your selfish desire to have what you want for free.

If you don't want to pay for Photoshop because you don't think it's worth it, then don't buy it. Use GIMP, or Paint.net, or just draw with a pencil. When you pirate Photoshop instead what you're saying is that you think it's a good piece of software and the money and developer time that have gone into it were worthwhile, but you aren't going to pay for it because your desires are more important.

What's a reasonable cost? Netflix, Lovefilm and Amazon Video are all pretty cheap.

The problem I think is that they have to compete with what is essentially the ultimate competitor: someone offering high-quality downloads, with no restrictions, for free. There's simply no way they can compete with that - if you're used to downloading whatever you want for free then anything a media company can offer will be worse.

That's why I think these measures are necessary, and a good thing. Yes, the entertainment industry needs to offer good, cheap services to let people access their media. But after a slow start those services are appearing, and getting better. What they need though is something to counterbalance the price advantage of illegal downloading - inconvenience and the threat of disconnection or legal action can be that counterbalance. Then the market for services like Netflix can grow, giving the providers more power to negotiate good deals and encouraging competition.

The regulatory measures are necessary though. As long as it's easy and consequence-free you can't compete with Bittorrent.

But what would it then do? Around here - the UK - it would show a message stating that there's an "unexpected item in the bagging area" and require a member of staff to authorise it.

Which they would do without checking since the message appears so regularly for no obvious reason.

You don't have to pay any income tax at all - there are plenty of places that don't charge it. Go live on the Cayman islands and make your fortune there - I don't think they have any income tax or capital gains tax, so you can keep 100% of your money!

Of course it's a bit more difficult to make your money without an educated workforce, or lots of infrastructure, or developed labour and financial laws, or trade connections, or any of the other things that government provides for business. But who needs any of that? People who make money make it entirely through their own effort and talent and don't owe one iota of a debt to the government.

On the other hand if you want to make use of the advantages that government spending provides in order to make your fortune it behoves you to pay the tax that finances that spending.

My post only makes sense in its context - I was replying to the GGP, which claimed that as long as there is any legitimate use it is always wrong to ban something. Once you start talking of "illegitimate uses [that] far outweighed the legitimate" you have accepted my point - that it is a question of balance. At that point it is perfectly consistent to say both that bittorrent has legitimate uses and that it should be banned or restricted.

I wasn't trying to say that bittorrent should be banned. But the article's premise seems to effectively be that the potential for legitimate use, be it ever so minor, is a persuasive argument against ISPs blocking or degrading BT traffic. That, I think, is plainly not the case.

I'm not sure that you have established that. The question, as you suggested, is one of balance, but taking the example of a drug used medicinally puts a heavy finger on that balance, because the ethical case against denying people legitimate medical treatment is exceptionally strong. It is therefore difficult to extrapolate from a medical example to any other industry.

And indeed there are plenty of examples of things that have been banned completely even though they have legitimate uses, because the harmful use outweighed (at least allegedly) those strongly. In the UK, for example, flick knives and spring-loaded knives are completely banned even though they have a legitimate use. The US bans flavoured cigarettes - those clearly have legitimate uses, but those were judged outweighed by the risk of encouraging smoking.

I think the GP was right to say that it was a bad analogy. It's a bad analogy for two reasons. First, you can't just close down the entire road network - it's not possible and even if it were, society would collapse and a great many people would die. Road travel is vital in a way that Bittorrent isn't, so the only possible response would be checkpoints, not complete closure. Second, the complaint about Bittorrent isn't that pirates could use it - it's that it's almost exclusively (someone above posted I think 99.7%) used for piracy. A closer analogy would be that 99% of the traffic on the roads was people doing nothing but moving pirated DVDs. If that were the case they still wouldn't close all the roads - as above, they are literally vital for peoples' survival. But you would see checkpoints and huge numbers of random stops to try to prevent those users, which is as close as you can get.