There are a lot of factors that go into China’s high piracy rates, the big one is that their media is state-run.  American media is NOT state-run.  The censoring of words (while futile and a bit trite) exists in the gray area between protecting a company’s ability to make money, and the civil liberties of Americans.  In this case, we don’t have the civil liberty to siphon profits from corporations by distributing their works for free.  We don’t have the ‘right’ to no censorship, either.  Censorship is especially useful when it’s protecting a companies right to control their own company’s profits.  Copyright and trademark laws set the guidelines for enforcement of a company’s right to protect their image, existence, and/ or profits. 

Let’s get one thing straight:  America isn’t the land of “do whatever the fuck you want.”  We’re granted liberties as they’re written in the Constitution.  No where in the Constitution does it say that we have the ‘right’ to unfettered access to content owned and distributed by other parties, nor do we have the ‘right’ to specific words.  Our government has a responsibility to protect the wealth of its citizens.  Protection of wealth is in the best interest of our nation and of the people – if you can’t protect your own wealth (or means to create wealth) then our nation doesn’t grow.  An American citizens’ ability to *own* their own property is what makes our nation *work*.  It’s why America went from nothing to Extreme Economic Powerhouse in less than 100 years.  

In America we have the right to *ideas*.  “Torrent” and “Megaupload” are not ideas or ideologies (despite people out there attempting to make it a religion) – they’re *services*.  We don’t have the ‘right’ to services, especially ones that undermine law-abiding companies.  You see, we have the right to make a profit in America – not the right to free stuff.  It’s the file-sharers that are making a mockery of our rights as citizens, NOT corporations or copyright holders.

I reiterate: Once you drop the bar for what is “justifiable” censorship to “filesharing” then you toss the entire last century’s worth of “Bad Things We Learned” and consign it to the scrap heap of history.

No, you shouldn’t even attempt to place millions of people on trial. Just as you shouldn’t abolish freedom of speech for millions based on nothing more than a song and a dance (literally).

And once you’ve accepted that any widespread phenomenon at all motivates censorship, that’s when it suddenly becomes REAL HARD to motivate why you shouldn’t also censor -fill in the blank-. If you can censor someone – anyone – for mentioning information regarding a file copy then we can’t very well say one damn thing when China or Iran stifles internal dissidence with the motivation that it could promote violence and violent crime. Which actually in comparison appears quite rational.

Really, this shouldn’t take a genius to understand, Jay. Censorship is ALWAYS the worst of all available options. This we know since the time the greeks poisoned philosophers in Athens.

And again, censorship doesn’t harm any pirate. none at all. Your statement: “The only thing that will stop file sharing is wide-spread censorship and financial control (torrent sites don’t operate on love and good vibes – they need money to run their servers).” Simply isn’t true.

Torrent sites today are redundant. More and more clients are becoming completely standalone. It’s a given that if, three years from now, every torrent site is gone and buried, filesharing will go on without a hitch from a fully decentralized client functionality. Torrent sites WERE a convenience at a time before p2p had adapted to full decentralization.

Really, that’s just a p2p throwback to the functionality of the cademlia and overnet network times.

And that additionally leaves you with massive untransparent censoring which only creates collateral damage to boot – as all your targets are immune to it.

Finally, at the end of your parade of straw men…
“If that kid has to lose his ability to download all the free stuff he wants then who gives a shit?”

That kid won’t lose his ability to download whatever the hell s/he likes for as long as there is an internet. That’s the relevant fact. In order to prevent him from doing so you need to remove the internet altogether.

Ask China how come their dissidents can literally do what they want online and why an estimated 60%+ of the online population there are considered filesharers despite China running a more draconian online environment than anyone else has even dreamed of – and then try mulling over the logical response which is “because tryng to control the internet more than we already do will break it, and hence, our entire economy”.

You may think it’s desirable to “protect” businesses from internet downloaders. Fine, believe what you wish. I am telling you that it simply isn’t possible. You can possibly break the net. You can’t control it.

A few poor purchases back in the day, do not make people pirate. They pirate because they’ve discovered its easy to do, low risk, saves them money and increases how much media they can consume at no cost to them. They wouldn’t say that though, got to find someone to blame.

Of course, what you said, that makes you appear hard done by and that its was another persons fault that those few poor album choices are the reason that you don’t pay for 99% of your media consumption. Damn those two bands……it was all their fault LOL