You guys are funny. I say funny, because as much as you sit there hoping and praying for regulation, you're pretty clueless it seems on what happens when regulation of all of this were to go into effect, here in the good 'ol USA.
I have a feeling you guys are so keen on government intervention and regulation because you are shit out of ideas and luck in trying to combat such a massive problem for content owners. Its understandable if that's the case, and certainly not a bad thing completely, but its not the ONLY solution out there ya know?
Most major piracy operations out on the interwebz are far more advanced than the US gov and all of the MPAA/RIAA folks combined. They are also not based here in the US, so trying to shut them down has proven a hell of a lot tougher than anyone really admits to. Sure, some big file sharing sites get shut down, but they are just replaced by mirrors and copycats by the tens of thousands. For every one operation taken down, it effectively creates many more popping up in its place. This shit, will never stop. If you think it will, you're an idiot.
They are also in the game for very different reasons than what these groups believe. Most of it actually has to do with bragging rights/street cred amongst their peers, control of content (ie. tweeking video filters, encoding, production value etc) and of course access to a movie or song for example before anyone else has it (0-day). There are lots of other reasons too, most of which are not addressed or even realized, but that's fine.
When you refer to these "evil doers" as "pirates" I'll bet you think they are just a bunch of ninja dressed dudes sitting around in some back alley basement hideout plotting on ways to steal your content and distribute it for monies across their vast connected infrastructure of other hideouts across the globe. -- Nope, most "pirates" are just your average joe blow who is likely to be sick of paying crazy high fees for a movie at an overpriced theater or doesn't want to buy a DVD/Bluray movie at some insane price. See, what you guys don't get is that its better to adapt than to fight things, at least in regards to the "piracy of downloadable content" is concerned. And by adapt, I don't mean adapt and sue them or toss them into prison, I mean just make it a lot more affordable. Stop raping them in price. Look, if a movie costs $250M to produce, maybe Hollywood should take a look at cutting costs on the production side versus the distribution side. They have a very firm control over that stuff, and they know it. They are not losing money on this.. perhaps they are losing a chunk of profit, but they are certainly not losing money in terms of costs.
Anyway, none of this stuff will actually go in the direction you are hoping for. Plainly because of one minor detail.
Money. That's all there is to it.
It costs the ISP's more money to monitor and slow things down than it does to acquire new costumers. Why do you think Comcast made that announcement that they would not share customer data? Because they are nice and sticking up for their customers? lol fuck no!! Its because it costs them more money and they don't like to lose money, they like to make it, so they don't want to even be bothered and used it instead as a PR campaign to look good for a change. +rep to them for the spin, they did a great job.
Think about the industries that would be effected? The security industry, online and offline would love it I'm sure, but only in the short term for most of them. File sharing hosts would probably charge more which is bullshit for "becoming legitimized". Production and distribution costs will certainly continue to rise, a lot faster I'm sure. And the best part of all of this, is the body of regulation, in our government would look to the private industry for "advisers and experts", because that's how regulation always works in this country. After a decade or two, you'll start getting a broken down and aged system that will not really do what it was first supposed to be in place for, as they'd be too busy sifting through an overwhelming amount of shit they were never even supposed to regulate or govern over. Coupled with all sorts of pointless gov jobs in the form of directors of this and that and blah blah blah...
See... its stupid and pointless. Just make shit cheaper and stop crying about this and get on with your day. If you can't figure out how to bank from this, then fuck off and go look somewhere else, because no one solution is gonna stop this. Ever. Well, that is, unless we all die on Dec 21 2012.. lol
