[Poohbah]

Interesting bit of sophistry. You're presupposing a natural right to steal what isn't yours, based solely on your dislike of the price the copyright holder is asking.

[Nataku X]

The only way that anti-piracy laws can be enforced is to monitor internet connections on a country-wide scale, and possibly monitoring them under the discretion of the federal government.

Even if the federal government isn't going to monitor all ISP activity, they will still have to pass a law that gives them right to look up the logs of any ISP, and to force these ISPs to hand over customers' sensitive data. PERIOD. That's the least scary of options--can you say hardware-chip identification (required in the US or punished by jail), anyone?

As a programmer, I'm well aware that if I ever do develop anything that's popular, I'll be losing a lot of business to piracy. However, the trade-off in privacy just ain't worth even a trillion dollars to me.

[babaloo999]

You're almost making me guilty for downloading a song or two and then purchasing a cd if it's available somewhere. Granted, I'll go to Best Buy or try to find it in the 'used' section somewhere.
I simply refuse to pay $16.99 for a cd at some of the higher priced outlets, not that I haven't given in and done that a couple of times. No more, there's nothing out there that I can't live without.