Seems to have been a pretty effective smear campaign, if you ask me.

Only if you consider Wikileaks and Assange one and the same.

Yes, because as we all know Steam ended game piracy, iTunes ended music piracy, and Hulu ended TV show piracy.

Don't get me wrong, I think all those companies are doing great things and are being as competitive as they possibly can be but let's not forget the core of the problem is a big group of people who think they deserve products instantly ('It's in the theatre, why should I have to wait?') and for free.

I didn't have any problems signing up for cable internet by itself. There wasn't even an installation fee.

I did eventually get cable TV several months later but ended up dropping it when I realized I was paying over $800 a year for something I hardly watched. There wasn't any problem with that either.

"Sometimes scientific theories turn out wrong" is just as meaningless and empty a statement about global climate change as "sometimes scientific theories turn out to be right". I could say laypersons doubted heliocentrism, plate tectonics, and evolution too. Would that prove global warming is real?

Certainly, your list of "scientific theories" is dubious at best. Flat earth and phrenology aren't scientific ideas by any standard and cold fusion and N-rays were discredited less than a year after they were publicized.

The store I bought it from looked at the open shrink wrap and said "Sorry". They wouldn't even let me exchange it because, according to the manager, they'd have to eat the cost of it.

That's a shoddy operation. Most retailers can get exchanges or credit from the manufacturer but even if this is a case where they couldn't they never should have let the customer take the loss. It's a good way to lose a customer for good (and for the measly wholesale cost of a DVD).