kane

Well, it is pretty simple. If you remember back to the late 90's early 2000's there was still piracy, but it wasn't easy to find things. You had to have some knowledge and ability to find stuff. It was ICR channels and Warez sites and things that had tons of spyware and viruses that you had to deal with. If you knew what you were doing and where to look you could find stuff, but not like today and there was a dozen fake files for every real one. Today you can type the name of any movie, song or album + the word torrent and google spits back a dozen sites with what you are looking for. Those sites tell you step by step how to use them. It is very easy. I know it is too easy because I know a few people who know next to nothing about computers and even they know how to download something from a torrent.

If those torrent sites have no way of making money they will go away. As you say many people pirate just for the fun of it or the desire not to pay, but the big sites operate out of a desire to make money. When that ability is gone they are going to close up shop.

If a forum can't make money, it won't exist. If a torrent site can't make money it will not exist. If you add into that companies going after sites legally it is likely people would not run a torrent site or forum or something like that as a hobby that makes no money and also puts that at legal risk. There would still be other avenues, but it could make it something that is harder for the average person to find. Those people may then again become a paying customer.

I will give you an exact case in point. I have a friend who is a movie nut. He loves movies and owns a ton of DVDS. He now downloads everything he wants to see and admits that he hasn't paid for a movie in more than a few years. His computer knowledge is limited, but he knows how to easily find the movies he wants to watch. When I asked him what it would take for him to go back to how he used to be when he bought a lot of movies he said the only way would be if he could no longer easily download stuff. If it were hard to find and he couldn't download it, he likely would go back to being someone who paid for the movies he wanted to see.

By taking away the ways the pirating sites can make money it could greatly limit the number of them out there and thus make it difficult for the average person to download stuff. Sure, the hardcore pirates will still exist, but likely Jane the soccer mom and Bob the mechanic who have little knowledge of how these things work would have a harder time finding stuff to download and could go back to paying for it like they did before.