My view is that it is now impossible for anyone to control piracy. It's so wide-spread now with CDR (people copying playstation games, CD-ROM, music, etc), web and ftp sites (offering cracks, etc.), that it's only a matter of time before the laws will need to be looked at again - and changed in relation to how ineffective they are. Stealing music or program/data, where the product isn't tangible, isn't viewed by the average person as being the same as someone nicking a touchy/feely object like a loaf of bread. If people have their own media/storage - blank tape/CD, then they get the feeling that they can put anything they want on it. They're very unlikely to get caught and.. shrug.. you know the rest.
Look at the sales of blank CD recordable discs now. They're selling millions at computer fairs every week. When I first started attending them (about ten years ago), the punters were generally the archetypal nerdy anorak/intellectual sort. Nowadays, I see gangs of lads who would look more at home fighting outside a football ground - haggling with traders to see how much discount they can get for a few thousand blank CDs. And I see boxes upon boxes of CD recorders for sale, often made by the same people who sell software and music. I didn't realise that there was *so* much copyright-free music/data around! The question is this: where's it all going to end, eh? Dave (neither moralising or cocking a snoot at the people who 'suffer')
