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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnRTroy" data-source="post: 4747994" data-attributes="member: 2732">What I see as the straw man is the people parrotting "you can't stop piracy no matter how hard you try".  Well, that can be applied to everything.  Counterfeiting, like piracy, causes financial damage, it's just the government and citizens are the victims rather than a corporation or individual.  Digital Piracy is the only crime I see where people want the victims to "ignore it".If you believe you have the right to share a book amongst people, there are ways to do it ethically that mimic the old ways.Let them view your screen, or a big monitor or projector.  A physical book can only occupy a certain amount of space.  Or, give them access to your computer via VNC or something that allows viewing but not copying when you're in the same location (over a LAN).  But don't copy.  That's the key thing.  If you truly want to lend a person your book, delete your copy on your disk, and accept that (a) the person might never give it back, same as a book and (b) the person could upload it, putting you at risk.Privacy is going to be hard to come by in the new age, especially with people twittering and blogging and making public statements.  Your last statement is flawed.  Economic realities take over.  Sharing is no good if it drives the business you patronize out.  It's easy to say "create new business models" when it's not your job on the line.  The so-called "long tail" is not very lucrative, unless you are a huge aggregator.  I think the current recession is going to be a wake up call.  You're already seeing people change their models--newspapers want to start getting people to pay for content again.  Exactly, nobody is learning to "do without".  Entertainment is much higher on the scale of the "hierarchy of needs".  I'm afraid those who endorse piracy are not learning to do without or sacrifice.  There are many legal ways of getting entertainment if you are not wealthy.I dislike DRM myself, but like locks, they are there to keep the honest people honest.  Taking away locks would not be a good thing.  That's what I like about Watermarking.  Wizards was able to find the idiots who posted the items and hopefully punish them.I've become a little cynical--but I think there are two components to enforcing laws.  Fear, and Guilt/Ethics.  The former is more important than the latter.  Some people might be tempted to smoke pot or patronize a prostitute or go over the speed limit based on their own moral standards, but they have enough fear to not do it because if they get caught, it would mean very bad things.  What I'd like to see is the criminalization of piracy and/or some sort of tort reform on it.  You make it a crime, and if piracy is detected the state gives the person a ticket.  There's a maximum penalty of say, $5000.00, and perhaps some mild jail time (30-90 days).   You make it like traffic tickets so you get it as soon as its detected.  Most people will pay the fees, and it teaches the young people quickly not to do it, because the parents will be BS and take Internet privileges away, and everybody is mostly scared of going to jail.  This would also reduce the torts--since then companies would be able to save their lawsuits for the biggest and boldest offenders.  If you took away the discrepancy of people suing for millions of dollars in damages against the 15 year old, and replaced it with the system above, I think most people would accept it.</blockquote>

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