The fact that buying of pirated goods drives the whole piracy "industry" is a moot point - that's blaming the people that use it for the people that distribute it, which is against human nature.
It's like going after all the herion addicts to try to erradicate the dealers.
Your average Joe citizen is ALWAYS going to use pirated goods - even the most squeaky clean person who wouldn't go 81 in an 80 zone will at some point have a few mp3's or a copy of word loaned by a friend - a temporary measure that usually becomes permanent.
I don't condone piracy, but I'm a realist - it happens and the vast majority of people will use some form of pirated goods in thier lives. Hell, cmon, you ALL know someone's mom/sister/brother/dad who just wanted to open a word document and didn't have word, so they obtained a copy from someone.
It's exactly the same as home taping in 80's and 90's - everyone and thier gran taped stuff of records, even though it was illegal - but guess what ? - companies manufactured the means to do this ! - what the hell else was a tape recorder for ? - well, to use todays analogy, just to backup your records ?
However, there is a difference between that occassional taping and swapping of tapes and the guy who sells tapes at the car boot sale - IOW, the low end of the real piracy trade.
The equivalent of that guy now is the guy on the public networks sharing gigs and gigs of data in order to improve thier "credit rating" to get more "warez" - the guys above that trade on the private networks for cash.
Those are the guys that should be targetted, not your average citizen who gets a copy of a game or word from a buddy. But they should be targetted, given a small fine and depending on thier involvement, lead authorities higher up the chain.
This is not a solution, however, because in the final analysis, the method of digital distribution is changing too rapidly for many "brick and mortar" companies to keep up. They have misread the market. Todays youth want things now, they don't care for the packaging, just the product.
Most people over 30 will understand the collectors instinct of having something physical that your music is stored on - many of us had/have an almost reverential love of our record/CD collections. Many of us still collect CD's, or collect DVD's
For younger people, that just isn't the case anymore for the most part. If youth can't afford it and they want it, they just pirate it and the vast majority, no matter how much they deny it, see very little wrong with ripping mp3's of the net, or burning a copy of a buddies windowsXP, or ripping a DVD - that much is plain fact. The packaging means nothing. It's a throw-away digital society - and this has been fed and generated by the very people who create the media.
In the big picture, it's the media giants who are responsible for rampant piracy, by marketing thier products at high cost and making people want them badly. By marketing to youth, who haven't yet got the full mental capacity to sift through the marketing bullsh1t.
The movie industry and the games industry have had record years in terms of profits, that says something to me - despite the piracy, the greed of these industries is what brings in the profits.
