German magazine says intellectuals rejecting Pirate Party

No, not at all, not here. Well, of course some are, and maybe the german connotation is different. But an intellectual may very well be anti-technological, but a computer scientist don't have to be intellectual. For example, the cliche(!) computer scientist doesn't read the high literature or makes philosophical statements about the state of society (i know that some do, but that's not necessarily the image the majority of society has).

That about sums it up.

Many older, non-technical people (where "older" can start as low as 35) have trouble reasoning about this subject even though they're perfectly capable of complex thinking otherwise.

They simply don't believe that you can't technically ban file-sharing, not even reduce it, short of shutting down the internet (which nobody wants).

Case in point: All of the largest bodies in media have been putting all their weight behind stopping "piracy" for the past decade. But they're not even making a dent[1].

I've had some moderate success explaining this to non-technical non-pirates in very long and repetitive discussions, with lots of graphic examples such as "grabbing water" or "how would you ban certain words to be said on the telephone?".

This mind-gap is extremely widespread and more than once I've wished I could have pointed them to a blog-post (a "manifesto", if you will) that does nothing but explain in the clearest terms (with pictures!) today's reality of P2P filesharing and why the genie is not going back into the bottle.

[1] http://asset3.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/07/08/1996_6...