People are going to pirate things as long as the technology exists. We may not be as eccentric as Captain Jack, but we are going to "plunder our weasly black hearts out". As long as society is able, there will be pirating taking place. Nothing the goverment can do will stop it. The harder they crack down, the longer the metaphoracle guns stay trained on us, the more we are going to pirate. The harder they try to stop us, the harder we will try to defeat them.
Arresting owners of sites, suing downloaders, and tracking files can potentially scare away downloaders...but there will always be those who refuse to stop. The "weak at heart" will waiver, but the avid pirates will not be deterred by scare tactics.
They will continue to find ways to trick the goverment; learn how they think as Captain Jack does. Products such as PeerGuardian will hide IP adresses, making the smart Pirate almost impossible to find. Downloaders will look out for each other, when a file is tracked they tell others; downloading sites often have comment areas which allow users to comment and rate files. There is not much that the goverment can do to stop "infringments of copyright".
For instance, a friend of my brother has gotten 3 warnings from his ISP, 3 letters telling him to "cease and desist" his downloading. Has he stopped.
No.
He was blacklisted by his provider, but he just found another service that would serve him. He downloads thousands of movies yearly, is caught occassionally, and he doesn't see it as a reason to stop. Most pirates see things the same way.
If they can get away with it 999 times out of 1000 it is worth it. So many downloaders aren't caught despite the goverments efforts that stopping just because "they might catch you" seems silly. The goverment goes after the big-wigs, taking out the providers, those who download and seed constantly, but it is a losing battle; more will constantly pop up. Less constant downloaders aren't caught, and those who are smart about it have little to worry about.
The goverment's efforts aren't working, they obviously need to come up with a new plan. They can't generate enough fear to make people stop, so something else must be done if they really wish pirating to cease.
Copyright law needs to be re-evaluated. In the internet age, the old catchings of copyright are no longer applicable. Things are copied, shared, and taken because the technology is there. One can do so practically annonymously.
Most internet pirates would not go out a steal a boat like Jack. They won't rob a convenience store or steal a woman's purse, but they will download a movie. They will torrent albums and seed television seasons because the likelyhood of getting caught is slim, and they feel that only big business is adversly affected.
The goverment needs to reevaluate its policies and get things together otherwise they will never "defeat" pirating. We will mutiny.
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot
Drink up me hearties, yo ho
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me
I agree, people are always going to pirate things from the internet. The scare tactics that the government uses aren't going to and never will work.
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