After reading all the post and the different views on the subject i think it’s plain to see that piracy, (agree with it or not), is here to stay and will increase. In the main there seems to be two reasons for that. One is corporate greed and the other is that we are a cynical society with an everyman for himself attitude. I'm sure there are a few people who dont copy stuff they shouldn’t, but on the whole we all do it. the only difference is, we all have our own line that we wont cross before we feel we are doing something illegal. That line differs from person to person. For me, my line seems to be at games, but it doesn’t cross my mind at all that im doing something illegal if a download the latest episode of lost from the states or go hunting for that old record in digital format that i liked when i was a kid. After all, who is it hurting? This is when i have to agree with some comments on here about the rules being made to protect the big companies, because who have i stolen from. when I download say an episode of lost, does the company that owns it, or the TV channel that shows it suddenly became poorer by £4.50 or something. No of course not. Makes no difference to them. What makes the difference is ive given myself a choice of how i get something, and one that doesn’t hold me to ransom by having to pay for a subscription to satellite TV or something. One of the posts hit the phrase on the head when he said "treating us all like cattle"... well too right. The big business is the lion trying to fleece us all, and we are being rounded up nicely. course they will throw up their arms in some moral outrage if any of the cattle escape the trap, no matter how harmless that one persons attempt to get something for nothing is. And Nooooooo, im not saying stealing is ok, or breaking the law to get something you couldn’t get any other way is ok. Let’s get things into prospective here. I just think that people who defend against piracy tend to do so in the same way people may defend a religion, and end up just spouting what they think they should be saying, a form of brainwashing really, without actually thinking in reality what most people's attempts at piracy, means nothing, has no effect on anything, but lumps us in with the people who have 50 DVD recorders in a room knocking off 100 DVD an hour being funded by organized crime. those are the real offenders, not some kid on a pc wanting to listen to the latest dance tune, so he downloads it from Kazza or something. [>:)]

Just found this series of three articles on the Twenty-Sided blog:http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1556http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1558http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1559Shamus takes a line that might be welcome - that he's a regular gamer, opposed to piracy, but not willing to become a victim of the publisher's technological efforts to tackle a social problem.

Quote: I do see a winner from piracy, ATI and nVidia [;)]

I see another winner, the peddlers of hardware such as cd writers and blank DVD's.Here in France you got taxes on every possible storage place, for private copy purposes... so people ask themselves 'Do I get the right to copy stuff or don't I'?Anyway, we here at Metaboli offer a legal alternative, so enjoy [:">]