QUOTE (JCDRANZER @ Jan 19 2012, 08:17 PM) I was wondering how the US government would arrest the rest of the world, if they had got the hands dirty according to them.
I think what's interesting is that all of the accused are foreigners and none of the US employees involved were actually arrested or mentioned for that matter. It makes me question what is the ultimate goal here.
The problem is, will someone now come out and make a free file sharing site? and furthermore not supported by ads?
I think what a lot of people still in the industry do not realize is the damage done is actually quite minimal in terms of piracy:
Music: people blame piracy for the lack of CD sales. I think it's more of an issue that you have iTunes and Amazon music now that really carry the weight here. There is little to no incentive to buy music CDs anymore and have them simply gather dust on a shelf.
Movies and video games: While still not as digital as music, movies and video games damage by piracy is minimal overall. If anything, I'm pretty sure piracy helps promote the product more than hurts it. Most people will have the mentality "if I don't know what it is, I won't buy it." Furthermore, most people that pirate are likely those that don't have the money to buy it in the first place, meaning that they would never have been customers anyways. If you look at the damage claimed by Megaupload of $500M revenue wise, that's literally peanuts compared to what the media industry makes. If piracy was bigger, the media industry would have been long gone.
Software: Now, if anything, this is where things may be hit hard. Software is literally a dead industry at the individual consumer level. Most people don't regularly spend the extra money to upgrade a product unless they really have to. But why isn't this entirely dead? It's because you have start-ups, established corporations, and the like all demanding for the latest version of this product (e.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe products, etc...). This alone rakes in a lot of profit and while it isn't profit maximizing, it's still a vast majority of what the company would be making.
Lastly, as the people who grew up in the late 80s, 90s, and 2000s grow older, I'm sure most (80-90%) have been involved in some sort of piracy whether it be music, dvds, or movies or anything of the sort, including government officials, politicians, and those in the media industry. By human nature, people are greedy for money, and they will use any means in this poor economy to extort additional cash, and I'm sure megaupload was the first step as a result. There's no way this is just a mere coincidence since if it was, Megaupload would have been shut down around the time pirate bay and isohunt went "legal."