MBR is just a list of info on how a harddisk is set up and what the bootpoint is, and yes viruses can hide in that reserved space and that's nasty, but it's actually not that hard to fix for someone with some knowledge, you simply connect the HD to a clean computer (else the virus will be running as soon as it's turned on) as a secondary drive and rewrite the MBR to normal values.

Lets see, we have alternatives for lots of software that costs money. Of course Microsoft with their incredible marketshare is continually releasing ads to scare its customers from moving to Linux, Open Office, etc. They know the alternatives aren't perfect, but if they see enough people switch it'll increase support for these free products and they'll never get the customers back. Not to mention that lots of the best utilities are free where 10+ years ago almost everything had a dollar value. Also, just look at Droid and Apple's Apps. There are some great free apps available that people obviously worked really hard on.
The point is it's a work in progress.
As for music and movies I'm sure we'll see the numbers come down just as soon as people can buy the $8 flat rate all you can watch/listen movies and music per month. Companies resisted radio and tv, and now some pioneering companies like Netflix will make it happen. The movie and music industry knows they make their money nickle and diming us. eg. the price of movies at the boxoffice, Bluray/DVD/CD's, and having no control of tv/radio programming. Now we're finally getting access to huge libraries to watch what we want rather than saving everything on Tivo, rushing to watch something timeshifted, or downloading YouTube HD videos and ripping an MP3. The industry resisted on-demand content but slowly this recession is forcing them to look for alternative sources of revenue. When they unlock the vaults they wont be able to get it back. And easy access and wide availability will reduce much of the piracy because it's an affordable subscription service. Companies know this, but they want to keep the sky's-the-limit prices as high as possible. Why sell volume when you can sell a product one by one?

I want all the money I can carry in my pockets.

And then I want more money so i can fill every room of my house with it.

Then I want even more money so i can have my own bank and fill that with money.

I just wanna watch a free film. Who's the bad guy here?

Firstly, it doesn't matter if a tracker is taken down, if other trackers also host a torrent (typically the case), or if seeds and peers support decentralised tracking protocols e.g. DHT.

Secondly, this article thoroughly demolishes the arguments supporting IP:
http://mises.org/daily/4575

IP KO!

Some people seem rather trigger happy about the network platform call Bittorrent, I think they need to chill out.

Shouter and others, IP infringement is not "Piracy"; that is a misuse of the word, one which corrupt corporate/legal propagandists rabidly spread around. IP infringement is not criminal, it is not theft, it is at most infringement, a civil issue. Getting excited because you may have an investment in IP protection does not change these facts!

Read up on Austrian economics and get a clue about how just how stupid and stagnant IP protection is. Mises.org is a good place to start. When you understand this, you will understand that the breach of IP protection is rational, and not immoral at all.

Just because the state backs something does not make it right or moral, in fact a lot of what the state does is quite stupid and damaging e.g. rapidly devaluing fiat money, Quantative Easing, allowing fractional reserve banking, income tax, bailing out negligent banks, enabling corporations to exist for more than a generation etc....!

The crux of the matter is that copying dat isn't theft in the same way that stealing a car is theft.If you have a chair, and I like your chair and I steal it. that's clearly theft.

But what's happening here isn't like that. "Piracy" is just copying, and if it's not being done for profit there's nothing wrong with it.

If you have a chair that I like, and I measure your chair and then build an exact copy for myself, do I have to pay the furniture factory the same price you paid it to get your chair? No. That would be silly.

So why should I have to pay for music that I copied in the same way? "Intellectual property" means "made-up property". It's fake, made up, pretend. Any laws to the contrary are a form of thought control.

The pirates fully understand they are stealing and think they are above the law. That's why we have prisons. <lol

THE VERY CRUX OF THIS DEBATE IS THE IDEA OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. ON ONE HAND PIRATES DO NOT COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND THAT SOMETHING AMORPHOUS AS INTELLECTUAL CONCEPT CAN COST A LOT OF TIME, EFFORT, AND MONEY TO MAKE REAL AND THEREFORE CONSTITUTES ACTUAL PROPERTY THAT THEY SHOULDN'T STEAL. ON OTHER HAND, CONTENT CREATORS ARE AT THE MERCY OF THEIR AMORPHOUS CREATION THAT, ONCE IT GETS 'OUT THERE', IT'S GONE.
SINCE PIRATES CHOOSE TO NOT GET IT, THEN THEY NEED MORE CRIMINAL CONVICTION SO AT LEAST THEY HAVE AN INKLING THAT THEY ARE TREADING ON SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROPERTY.
HERE'S A PIRATE CHALLENGE: IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE PRICE BEING CHARGED, WHY DON'T YOU MAKE YOUR OWN ALTERNATIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COMPETE ON PRICE? IF WHAT YOU ARE STEALING IS ACTUALLY OVER PRICED, I MEAN ACTUALLY FOR-REAL, THEN YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO COMPETE PRETTY EASILY THERE. THE REWARD IS PRETTY NEAR LIMITLESS AS WELL: CREATE ONCE, SELL OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, YOU'LL GET SUPER RICH IN NO TIME.

"As long as they continue to imprison operators of sites that facilitate piracy, it's all good. Get the scum off the streets."

I feel a huge flaw should be pointed out here..

the "scum" isnt on the streets, they're at home, hurting no one, taking a little bit back from an increasingly over funded industry.

Leading directly to the point that as over funded, over paid and over hyped as these films/actors are, does a few thousand people from a potential audience of billions not paying an inflated price to sit in a greasy, sticky, smelly theatre to watch a film they have loyally watched be produced, really damage the financial returns of these products?

The majority of these people will buy the dvd for a collection anyway and only want to own a "pirate" version of the film so they can watch it in the interim of theatre to DVD production.

Goes on to demonstrate once again, that if the facility isn't secure, no amount of network security will save you. (In other news, sky is still blue.)

This is bullshit. You dont realise that innocent people get effected. I run a legitimate business and dont pirate any content, yet because of the network attack ive lost all my websites.

I have tons of my clients complaining, and its costing me lots of money.

I realise some people want to stop piracy or whatever but why do you have to do it at the cost of innocent people.

Yes yes....Lets lock up all the pirates and since we won't have room left in the prisons we'll have to release all the murderers, rapists, drug dealers and so forth and so on. That would be much better for corporations, since they don't have influence on their bottom line. Not like some pirate downloading a song, video or piece of software they weren't going to buy in the first place would have....opps.

As long as they continue to imprison operators of sites that facilitate piracy, it's all good. Get the scum off the streets.