If the copyright holders decide to take you to court, they have to apply to the courts, with proof that the "subscriber" infringed on their copyright, for any subscriber information.

Also, IF they take you to court, and IF they win, you cannot be sued for any other copyright violations that occurred before the one you got sued for.

Also, if I recall correctly, here in Canada, which ever side looses the case, may have to pays the legal fees for both sides, depending on the judgement.

Actually it gets better here in Canada.

To collect any money or get any information about you from your ISP, they have to sue you. If you get sued and found guilty, you pay "actual" damages or up to $5000 for all infringements, depending on the judge. However, with the way the law is worded, if you get sued for copyright infringement, it resets the clock, so to speak.

As an example, if you are sharing Sony music albums and Disney movies, and Sony takes you to court and wins, Disney cannot sue you, Sony cannot sue you again for missed infringements, etc. They can only sue you for new infringements and the clock resets again.

The exception is copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but then the copyright holder has to prove commercial intent.

PS: yes, the ISP is obligated by law to pass infringement notices to the end users, and those notices are being abused asking for settlements using US style "damages". That is one loophole in the Canadian system that our Canadian government left open, possibly on purpose.

"Developing software costs time and money" agreed on this point, but 80+% of the software used by Ubuntu was not developed by Canonical. So you really are paying Canonical to use software that someone else developed and is not getting a cent.

"The reality is that if you find something valuable then you should be willing to pay for it either through ads or a flat fee otherwise you are a freeloader/leach/lamer." So you are saying that any derivative distribution is a leach...and since Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, Ubuntu is a leach.

There is a difference between being a software developer and being a distribution maintainer. One writes and maintains software and the other collects software written by others and packages for a particular OS/distribution.

I think, if the ad revenue that Ubuntu will/plans on getting was distributed to every software package used by Ubuntu, there would be less issues.

Baen books are copyrighted, yes, but they also provide free downloads of some of their books online ( http://www.baen.com/library/ ). No DRM, no black box. You can get them in many formats. For example, the Honor harrington series, most of the books are available free online or on a CD that Baen produced and distributed (again, no DRM).

I think this is what gweihir was referring to.

I will start by saying that I have not used Ubuntu in a while, so things may have changed. Also, while I have worked for Dell, I have mixed feelings about their products (no, I am not a Dell fan boy).

First, when I had a fresh install of Ubuntu on the computer, to get the networking setup, I just had to plug in the network cable. By default, the network card was configured to DHCP. Granted, that won't work for PPPoE connections, but if you have a router that is pre-configured properly, you do not need to worry about PPPoE. Technically, any Windows based computer does this as well, if it was pre-configured properly.

Second, Ubuntu, by default, has all the basic legal applications pre-installed (like word processor, spreadsheet, etc). I say legal, because mp3 and DVD playback requires extra steps due to US laws (although Dell is the only company that I know of that ships Ubuntu with a legal DVD player pre-installed). The question then becomes, does the user KNOW the difference between a brand name and the type of application it is? For example, that MS Word is a word processor, or that Internet Explorer is a web browser and NOT the Internet?

Third, Dell has tried to make using Ubuntu as simple as possible (I was working at Dell when they introduced Ubuntu systems, and I had access to some of the documentation). Dell ships their Ubuntu systems ready to go, no tinkering needed, all drivers pre-loaded, etc (with the above mentioned mp3 playback issue). Or they did while I was there.

Granted, if you just download a Linux ISO file, things are going to be different. And yes, Linux is not for everyone.

I think part of the problems is that Microsoft dumbed down the OS too much, and now computer users expect a lot of hand holding when they use any OS. Then again, that is MY opinion and yours may vary from it.