Most of them are named Kim, Lee, or Park so it is impossible to distinguish the pirates from the non-pirates.

Oh my God ! Someone call Knight ! Massive amounts of children are being distracted by games !
Someone must do something !

For some of us it is neither right or wrong. Before having broadband I never bought a single DVD and never watched movies unless it was in a theatre or at a friend's house if they happened to purchase the movie. Nothing has changed since then except I now watch a lot more movies that I pirate. The movie companies are not losing my business because they never had it to begin with. I find most movies to be crap and after pirating and watching I can't help but think about how unhappy I would have been had I actually paid for the movie. Nothing has changed for them or I except more of my time is wasted watching movies.

Jamie, "Intellectual Property" is a misleading and propagandist term. Copyrights, patents and trademarks aren't property.

If I were to steal your car you would be out of pocket one car, but if we shared information/art/culture then we both benefit (and I am not against charging for this service).

But it is contrary to a free society to artificially prevent this transmission/sharing of information/art/culture simply because it is against the interests of a tiny minority.

I'm sure the percentage of those surfers who are Starcraft or Diablo players is even higher though.

I agree with the above poster. Consider the region coding on DVD's, it was there to block regions from viewing the DVD, so now we all have workarounds for that now. These media restrictions are about propping up an old distribution model. The old model of staggered release dates or artificial premium's for your country are going away in this world. I look at this and wonder why the media companies dont have the fastest servers, the easiest way to buy. Make it easy for us. No price premiums, no delays - let me choose.

But those media companies are run by old finance types who only look at gross margins on a per unit basis and the web is evil (except for pR0n surfing when they get bored).

I continue to look forward to a new web based distribution system, one based upon demand, not location, and fairly priced, fast servers, and no DRM.

I'm sorry, but I really do not see that you can lump piracy into the context of legitimate communication. Whilst it is easy and convenient at the moment, that does not make it a right, and you can absolutely never view someone else's intellectual property as being yours as of right simply because you are capable of communicating it. That is just silly. By all means pirate things - but don't think that you are right to do so, or that your ability to do so is in any way tied up with freedom of speech.

As far as new laws go, nothing has been passed in any western country that I am aware of that has really had a detrimental affect on 'the internet' as a whole. Furthermore, if some laws or proposed laws go over the top, it is only because of abuse of the freedoms that people have access to via the internet that have caused legislators and lobbyists to start doing their jobs anyway.

from just about any other country I bet. Piracy is here, its easy to get away with, and has little perceptible risk. If the RIAssA and the MPAssA really want to get a revenue stream to replace their conventional sales they better get on board fast before another dinosaur killer hits.

Uninhibited file-sharing is a consequence of a free and fast Internet. It is, in the end, about communication between people, and the Internet is the ultimate enabler of communication.
Attempts to shut down "piracy" on the Internet always lead to trying to inhibit the freedom of communication, to make the Internet less than what it is. Just look at all the laws that are cooking, and those that have already been passed.