For example, on their website the MPAA suggest in one paragraph that by violating a movie’s copyright people are stealing and that it’s no different to taking a movie from a shop.

Then a few paragraphs later they say that your “parents won’t be happy” if you’re fined $3000 for pirating movies.

When was the last time a thief was fined $3000 for taking a video from a store. Apparently it’s MUCH WORSE than stealing from a shop. Even though in the instance of stealing from a shop, the shop owner has actually lost something. i.e: He no longer has the ability to sell that DVD because it’s GONE.

In the case of piracy, the original owner loses nothing, the video that was purchased by the person it was “stolen” from has lost nothing, There is no scarcity of “intellectual property” as with real property, so it should not get as much protection under the law.

Despite the demonstrably lower level of harm caused to everyone involved when it comes to piracy, the penalties involved are much harsher.

The message the MPAA is trying to send is clear to me; if you want the latest DVD, go steal it from a store, the penalties are far less severe and apparently it’s “exactly the same thing”.

The great part about stealing directly from the store is that you get the artwork and an original DVD that the police can’t identify as stolen,

Back in the real world, it’s pretty clear that you’re causing actual harm to the poor victim of theft, who is now out of pocket for the price of a DVD.

Sadly, he’s not able to pass the cost along to the artists and other people who the MPAA punish for a lack of a theoretical “profit” that they would have made if every download of a movie translated to a lost sale (remember there’s no proof that people who pirate DVDs would ever have paid for the original – in fact it logically indicates the opposite).

The really painfully stupid thing about the whole situation is that for me, if I download or am given a pirated movie that I really like, I’ll generally go and buy the DVD so that I can show/lend it to my friends without having to fuck around with computers and players and codecs and TV out and cables when I’m at their house, because most people don’t have a computer strapped to their TV ready-to-go.

I have nearly 1000 DVDs and BluRay discs in my collection, whereas I have about 30 pirated movies on my HTPC (mostly because I can’t get them on disc). The fact that they’ve made a lot more out of me legitimately than they’ve ever lost through piracy doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to them.

Way to go MPAAssholes!

Ok done….

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…