No, I don't think that is the question. No matter how hard they try, so called piracy cannot be stopped unless we go back to pre-digital age... and unles there is a nuclear holocaust this is not very likely. Either adapt your business model to new reality or go bankrupt - simple as that. And BTW - it was never so easy to copy things and at the same time creative industry never made so much money (and to make it clear, music industry and industry of selling plastic disc are not the same - I know that CD sales are going down). So much for that 'piracy killing music' BS.

This argument is based on assumption that the artificial scarcity is the only way to make profit out of creative work. This assumption is false - there are numerous success stories and studies proving that it is possible to make profit without the need to make your work artificially scarce using copyright, DRM etc. (if you are interested, check out techdirt.com regularly writing about this stuff). Attempts to restrict copying are more about inability/unwillingness of legacy business to adapt. Actually, if your assumption were right we would be all doomed and creative work would cease to exist because technological progress made it impossible to stop copying and sharing - artificial scarcity is a history.

Yep, I have seen joky stickers like that... I think it was in that MAXIM magazine. I would never have guessed that anyone could take it seriously.

>>>you must not use it!

What? And this man is talking about freedom? Please... you are not in a position to tell me what I must not do. Part of my freedom is an option to trust someone and give them control over my computing. I know what RMS has done, he used to be a great man but... I have grown up in a communist totalitarian country and watching RMS getting older is like watching some old commies - turning something that started like an idealistic fight for freedom into rigid dogma where there is the only truth and we "must not" do anything else then the dogma says... really sad.

What happened to that plan to encrypt the entire internet? We need it ASAP! I think TPB came up with that: The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet ... but the project seems to by dying out:-(

What makes it different? The court. The independent court that has to prove that you've committed the crime. The proposed French law would be about possibility to punish anyone without any court involved, without any proof.

There is a lot of anger in this discussion... but I think it's good to express our anger but it would be better to think about solution. What can we do to defend our privacy? It is not just UK - don't forget about Sweden, Finland, Australia... and these are only the countries that made their plans public... how many countries are there spying on us without us knowing about it? And you all know how internet works... the fact that UK is is going to spy on their traffic does not mean that only UK residents will be affected... you never know which server is where and what way your packets go... I think it's time to make sure that we all are NOT going to live in surveillance society. We have to assume that majority of people don't care about privacy and consequences of its loss until it's too late... and they are not going to do too much about protecting it... so the solution should be simple, easy to use... I know, we have VPNs and stuff... but that is not enough... it has to be something that could be easily adopted for all kinds of traffic. It should be something that is not easy to ban without loosing too much of benefits... so much that if any country decides to ban it it would mean significant loss in comparison to free countries - something like the technology that can make encryption so easy to use that many important web apps in any free country could by connected only thru encrypted connection protecting privacy of it's users... we have to use the fact that no country can control the whole internet. What else would this thing need to be? How could it work? What do we have to do to protect ourselves as world internet community? What do you think about proposals like IPETEE (http://newteevee.com/2008/07/09/the-pirate-bay-wants-to-encrypt-the-entire-internet/)?