[MineralMan]

"If the same conditions existed in the Automobile Industry, you would have Auto Manufacturers who charge 100x the manufacturing cost for their cars. Obviously, that is rediculous, because in the auto industry, no one would buy the car. In the entertainment industry, collusion in built-in."

You have a point. However, the cost of distributing a film on DVD is not limited to the cost of reproduction of the CD itself, of course. That's really not relevant, though.

Films, like automobiles, are products. Companies that produce them have investors, employees, etc., just like auto companies.

We're not talking about stuff that's 50 years old here. We're talking about current products, primarily. Products which have a real marketplace and real customers.

I'm not going to get into the profit structure of entertainment companies here. It's also not relevant.

Bottom line is that these file-sharing schemes break laws, and those who bypass the normal distribution channels for entertainment products are thieves. It's that simple.

I'm always embarassed by these discussions on Free Republic, where threads advocating other illegal activity are pulled immediately.

Why do I care? Well, I spent most of my life producing "intellectual properties." My software company went out of business a few years ago, not because its products were no good, but because nobody bothered to pay for them. Some of the programs are still the best in their categories and are still used by thousands of users. Yes, I was a shareware company, because I thought that the general honesty of the consumer would pay off. It did not.

I never resorted to crippling my software to encourage payment. I thought that was a lousy tool. So, folks downloaded the software, used it, and are still using it, all these years later. I still get calls from people for support for programs they refused to pay for.

And there it is. Now I sell something tangible, something that cannot be distributed online. Thievery is thievery. It's that simple.

[1stFreedom]

I guess it comes down to this:

Are intellectual propery laws just? Are copyrights just? I mean, it's one thing to call taking a fruit which you haven't paid for a theft, and then taking something else intangible, like a file, theft. When you take a file, no physical entity has been removed from the producers -- they have their masters.

I think this is a debate worth closer investigation.

[z3n]

"I never resorted to crippling my software to encourage payment. I thought that was a lousy tool. So, folks downloaded the software, used it, and are still using it, all these years later. I still get calls from people for support for programs they refused to pay for."

The software industry is almost as tough as the online media industry (but not quite). It is virtually imposible to get someone to pay for your services and the product of your work in the software industry (just as it is with online media), unless people absolutely need it.
Most of the software Giants (Microsoft, Macromedia, Adobe) have either taken over or started up those areas of software development that have any chance of being a market in which consumers will pay for software that satisfies needs that cannot be obtained elsewise.
I feel your pain.
In order to have a chance to run a profitable website (or web service), you need to have one in the top 500 on the internet (out of millions of sites). No one in this environment wants to pay. The internet is the bastion of a cruising and loitering mentality. Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking it. The freedom of the internet is probably the only place in the world where I think concepts communism and capitalism should be freely allowed reign.
Unfortunately, it is not a good model for demonstrating the benefits of a free market. There is actually way too much competition for attention on the internet, and the vast majority of information and content supplied to the internet is uncompensated... and the software market almost as bad.