"Welcome to the future, where if you are not a   under our total control, then you are a public enemy. Welcome to Business: Total Totalitarism." You know that about "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Well, most up there habe no good intentions but the road is the same. I don't think that fighting piracy is bad but sue me if I don't trust greedy capitalists as Champions of What is Right.

That sums it up nicely, Winter. The secondary problem is most of these corporate ass-jacks are just as greedy and self serving as even the most Hard Core Pirate. The difference is a "Pirate" rapes 1 or 2 Large Corporations while the "Corporation" rapes The General Populous of Entire Countries. Who's really making or loosing money here? All I see is a "Win/Win" for the Corporations.

If a Pirate downloads a Good Game he'll either like it and probably buy it so they can play multiplayer or they'll tell people it's a Good Game in which case those people will go out and buy it. The Company may or may not have lost one sale to the original pirate who broke the copy protection, but even that act in its-self generates further sales most of the time.

I don't condone the piracy, but I still see the Corporations having the most to gain either way. Lets not also forget that now the State and Feds want their cut of the "Piracy" action because now they can put all those people on "Probation" and keep them in the legal system for years leaching money out of them with the threat of incarceration. Don't think for a moment that some of these people getting sued won't also be facing "Criminal Charges", they will.

Once you're in "The System" ( <--- the Legal system) they don't let you go easily, I know that much from first hand experience.

Well, it's good to finally see some action being taken against piracy, unfortunately - as I'm sure we all expected - it's for all the wrong reasons by all the wrong people.  Instead of the Government Agencies acting to enforce the law and send a message, they're simply acting to appease campaign contributors and large scale Copyright holders.

Most such Actions taken in court, for example suing someone, are for the recovery of damages.  A company's disregard for saftey leading to permanent injury is a common one, for example.  America is famous for its bat-shit crazy court cases (McDonald sued for inducing obesity) however usually these entirely illogical arguments are thrown out of court.  I'm fairly confident what we're seeing here is, without doubt, a perversion of the law as the copyright holders are attempting to bypass the legal system.  By offering a basic settlement package to everyone, and lets be frank paying $1,500.00 is better than the prospect having to pay $150,000.00, they're attempting to skip the small part of deciding whether or not someone is actually guilty.
Since the issue is fairly convoluted from a legal standpoint and could possibly lead to long legal battles, and the fact that a small percentage of the accused are willfully duplicating copyrighted material illegally and know that they're guilty, this presents the Copyright holders with the magical answer: they get to 'recover' their lost profits without having to go through expensive court cases to do so and get everyone to admit that they're guilty by forcing them to decide to pay either a small amount or a very large amount.  The question of guilt never enters the picture, until the press release of "500,000 people guilty of software piracy" with of course gives them licence for more heavy handed practices.

With the ACTA in its next rounds of secret negotiations, with will require ISPs in every agreeing country to police their networks and report all P2P activity, Copyright holders are using every thing they have to come down hard on piracy.  I absolutely agree that Piracy needs to be tackled, it's an issue that has been left to fester for far too long, however it needs to tackled by the Legal systems of the world, not the profit focused Corporations who have stagnated every entertainment medium on the Earth. 
Every major movie, book, game, tv show and album is targeted at the 'common demographic' and created via boardroom thinking as opposed to any kind of artistic merrit.  Every entertainment medium on Earth is being devolved to secure profit margins as opposed to pursuing something meaningful.  Pirates are scum and no argument can be made to counter that, however if I had to chose between a world run by Copyright holders where only sequels, remakes, spin offs, re-hashes, clones or revivals of decades old series are getting made or given decent budgets and marketing, or a world infested by Pirates with no AAA titles of any kind on any medium and where only Indie scale projects succeed because everyone steals everything, I'll throw my vote behind the later.

As my friends like to say in the last five minutes of a tied football match: this shit just got serious.

Um...Hmm, lets see, there's WoW, UO, Lineage 2, and any other MMO I can think of that charges a Monthly fee (normally with Credit Card). Many other games are going that route. Cloud Gaming is going that route. And to Stop Piracy, game makers are All headed that way. Even with something like Elemental, which we aren't paying for monthly, still has MP games hosted on Stardock Servers. That costs Stardock money. Not all companies are as generous as Stardock, though, and most of them like to make money for letting people play on their servers.

I'm not saying Every Game on Earth is going to be Pay to Play within a year, it won't. It will take time, but the market is changing and everything IS moving more and more to being Online All The Time.

I'm simply relying on Human and Corporate Greed, period. That's not a "Conspiracy" and I'd really appreciate it if you Didn't lump me in with all those conspiracy "aliens are in my brain" nut-jobs

Not at all, Philly, not at all. I can see we got "Bears" around every bend on this road.

Med School?!?!?! pffft...if you wanted to make Real Money you would have went to Law School. There will always be dirty scum ball Criminals out there to prosecute.

Doctors will end up getting pressured from "Health Care Reform" to end up working for Peanuts. Why do you think Doctors come from all over the world to Work in America? Because in countries like Canada the State pays the doctors and the State doesn't like to pay a lot of money. So Doctors come to the US where they can charge outrageous amounts of money knowing people will have "insurance" to cover rising medical care costs. That's why 1 Aspirin from the Hospital costs $75 but you can get a whole bottle at the local drug store for $1.99 plus tax.

Ok, even I admit That One sounds a little like a conspiracy

Oh for christ's sake don't ever try that argument/excuse again.

Give it a rest.  It DOES NOT WORK.

When you watch the 'streamed/downloaded/through a peephole in a locked door...WHATEVER the means...yes WHATEVER METHOD  it is DISTRIBUTION without consent of the copyright holder.

It is THE ACT TRANSMISSION and of VIEWING without authority/consent from the copyright holder that is the breach of the Law.

Every time a person watches a pirated film/etc they are denying the actors/crew/etc a livelihood.

Ask people who work in the film industry...they'll make it quite clear to you how it affects them.  FYI I have a long-time friend who is a voter in the Academy....one who helps give these 'stars' of yours their gongs....but just like the undercutting of [western] manufacture by the cheap- labour East,  people....even ones you might know....will be hurting .... because a rule of some form or another is bent or broken.

My GOD this is a sad moment in the history of the internet.

Once more the rich guys won, and managed to "bribe" the government into taking action... for the benefit of their pockets so sad

Coming up next, microphones will be installed into all US bathrooms, just whistling the new blockbuster song will get you sued for IP violation...

Oh and jaffo and stardock have nothing to be happy about, these people "work" for the big guys like vivendi and RIAA, they wont give a nickle about small fish...

Goodnight and good luck!