"....it honestly makes me want to pirate! Especially since the only people/groups complaining are greedy, filthy rich bastards."

I'm an anti-piracy advocate and frankly, I think the 3-strikes law is extremely fair. It gives you TWO chances with complete immunity to quit stealing. If you haven't got the hint after your two warnings, then you get whatever the powers at be decree.

And the whole, "oh look - they make money so that makes it OK for me to steal" like Eddo22 is the absolute WORST excuse for pirating. So Mercedes makes money selling their cars - how many Mercedes have you stolen lately? People steal because of the ease and complete anonymity of the Internet. Quit trying to put up b.s. excuses for it, like you're some sort of honorable person who is just giving the "bad man" what they deserve. It's pathetic...

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So Tom.. If someone drives into your neighborhood with their laptop, cracks your wireless router encryption, downloads a few thousand terra bytes of movies, games, etc, you're gonna foot the bill for the fine right? Its YOUR IP address that will be recorded you know. Your ISP will hand YOU and YOUR account to the authorities. This has and does happen. Lets say you fight it and win, you still have to pay the lawyers.

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As the first commenter here said, iTunes and Steam are the BEST ways to combat piracy, i've dabbled with BitTorrent and LimeWIre and let me say, iTunes and Steam are the only services that actually entice me to spend money, i've bought hundreds of songs on iTunes and tens of game on Steam because they just make sense; they're really convenient, you can trust that you'll get the product hassle free and virus free and in the case of iTunes, you're getting far superior quality than a torrent provides.

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Any one who has anny sympathy with the record/film companies has been taken in by their b/s.

These companies have a business model from the times of vinyl . This model was highly profitable & made these companies a big easy wedge of cash. They do not want to change this model even though times have changed, All other models do not provide the massive profit margins they were used to, & believe it is their right to have & they might have to do a real days work

As an artist I would want as many people to listen to my work for free than never listening to it at all, but we alll know that the recording companies are not in it for the artists only the profits.

Good on the French at least as a country they have the balls to protest where most other countries are full of blind sheep thet just do as they are told without question.

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Tomsea obviously doesn't realize that greed is just as bad and probably worse than Piracy... in a way it is stealing. What's the phrase.. oh yeah. "The Rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

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Rules are meant to be broken? Or something like that haha. There will always be NEW ways to pirate software and movies... and It's funny how these laws actually promoted piracy... back to the drawing boards

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I'm not a piracy user, but LONG LIVE PIRACY.

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The music and video industry still make a ridiculous amount of money but everyone forgets about the adult film industry apparently since the release of the internet the dual market has dropped by ridiculous levels to a point were the stars can't even make enough money to survive. Yeah think about it.

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Well I guess I'm never moving to France...

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I have no problem with companies protecting their content. Some of the laws do seem pretty crazy though.

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When will people realize that Internet laws are nearly useless? The only real way to effectively combat illegal activity on the Internet is to provide incentives NOT to break the law, instead of making the consequences of breaking the laws more severe. Netflix is doing a great job of this with their video streaming. I used to pirate movies that I really didn't care to go see in the theater and that I didn't like enough to want to own it. Ever since I got a Netflix subscription, I don't care to pirate as I can watch many movies online as well as get a DVD every couple of days in the mail. As a result, Netflix, and in turn the movie companies, are getting my money whereas they weren't before. It's these kind of measures that will deter piracy.

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Same people were "pirating" or downloading Their music/movies for free, are on their macbooks Downloading and "pirating" from other artists/movie producers

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I concur. People are willing to pay for convenience. If companies make their products easily accessible for consumers to purchase, then people will gladly pay up.

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