The type of people this is intended to intimidate/scare away from getting into piracy couldn't buy anymore software than they already do, and any of them already committing piracy world likely remain unaffected. From an economical point of view the means that the youngsters using this software are indeed having a 'free lunch', aka increased consumer surplus, but not at the cost of producer surplus. I don't know what kind of moron they report to, to (need to) produce such a fire-and-miss from the behemoth that is the anti-piracy gun. Surely this is another anti-piracy parody, but then again they do tend to be pretty unintelligent to begin with.

All I can say are publishers (games, dvd, cd, etc) are all losing the plot on reality. I have to say they have the most warped views on ownership, piracy and the internet. Trade of used goods has ALWAYS been around, and frankly they didn't make it twice so they should only get the cut once. It's like they think "f*** the customers, this is an opportunity for revenue, or this is costing us, so lets slap it as unethical and wage war." Get out of the office for a second and realize how the world works. If you want more primary sales, lower the damn prices. Deal with it. Piracy != theft != resale

I think most of you are forgetting about the differences between American and UK (and at least some common wealth countries). If it's anything like in Canada these guys don't even get voted in so they're basically just a lingering monarchy, not quite a democracy. Why let some guys who don't even show up for work half the time who are just buddies with the Prime Minister get paid lots of money and have say of what real people want when they do not represent the real people.