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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind - the objective is not to shut down the sites, but make it difficult enough that your average person goes to legal sites instead.

Take me for example - I wouldn't have the faintest clue where to go find an illegal copy of a TV season on a "File Locker" - but I have zero problem finding legit stuff on iTunes or Amazon or Netflix.

I think the MPAA / RIAA have been very effective - in 2004/2005, there were a ton of places I knew about to download stolen content - but today - nope.

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Exactly. However, the methods of obtaining these files legitimately have improved vastly since then too. I will take whatever route is most convenient. For music, if I can give you my card details and you take a prearranged amount from my account every month, and I don't get interrupted, I will happily pay for this service (Spotify). Give me a TV service where I pay a fixed fee, and get to watch what I want when it suits me (on a saturday night, not at 9pm on a tuesday when I have to be up at 6 the following day), and I'll pay for it (Netflix). Service to get the latest and greatest game that my friend has been talking about all day, but all the shops are closed when I get home? Steam! Note that steam started selling 3rd party games in 2005, Spotify started in 2008 and Netflix started in 2007 (Streaming I mean, not the DVD on delivery). I realise this is only true for a small minority of countries (I'm in ireland), but Before these services, the alternatives were pirate or go and buy in a store. Now that I can easily get the media I want through legitimate means, I have virtually no reason to pirate stuff. Sometimes however, games I want/music I want is unavailable on X service. If I download it/use it I'm probably going to buy it at the next opportunity anyway.

I think this is taking an easy way out. If every one stops pirating and there is no piracy, raii/mpaa will make it expensive enough that poorer people will not be able to afford it or would be left out. Look at the isps and cable companies where there is no alternative(atleast in US) and they squeeze as much as they can out of the user giving as little as possible. In a way piracy is kind of a competition for media companies to make shows available for a reasonable price.

> I wouldn't have the faintest clue where to go find an illegal copy of a TV season on a "File Locker" -

google.com

You mean illegally copied? There is __still__ a huge difference.

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