Re: Theft/Piracy
"I would challenge you to find a single conviction for "stealing" a movie via download."
You semantic word play is so amusing. Would you go and explain to the people who have lost their jobs because of piracy that their livelihood wasn't stolen from them. I am sure it will make them feel so much happier.
"taxpayer money should not be spent on curbing an invented economic problem"
Just because it does not affect you does not mean the problem is invented. Theft of movies costs jobs. Sure, some movies are crap and that also costs jobs. That's the risk on takes. What one should not accept is people stealing the content, watching it without paying and then coming on to the Internet when other try to protect their income.
"A fair few of them will torrent it first and then buy it if it was good enough to justify wanting to watch it a second time."
*IF* it was good enough? They are thieves, nothing more. I hope they get caught.
They should read some reviews first. If it's good enough to torrent (which includes uploading, so they are doubly thieves) and watching even once; it deserves getting paid for. Items release under Creative Commons or similar excepted of course.
"Through any route, bums on cinema seats are falling"
Irrelevant. DVD, Blu-Ray, Cable, Streaming...all are perfectly legit and mean those who worked to create the asset still get paid.
If you won't pay to watch a movie (and I'll type this slowly so everyone can keep up) Don't. Watch. The. Movie.
Not hard, is it?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
