Originally Posted by Nautilus

I'm not so sure anymore if MPAA/RIAA are really serious about stopping piracy. They've been pretty much useless this year - they just keep publishing their garbage "watchlists", but after the MU raid there has been no real serious action. They didn't even kill thepiratebay, despite them being alsmost finished after the Supreme Court ruling. Their Dutch proxy BREIN is all but useless - Leaseweb and Ecatel are the largest piracy heavens on Earth, but BREIN takes no action, aside from occasionally closing some small torrent site or two. Their Swedish proxy is equally useless - in January they stated that they'll go after the Swedish torrents hard, but nothing happened.

Piracy has been a disaster for small and medium size independent studios and labels, who lived of off DVD and CD sales. But not so much for Hollywood and big music labels, because they're the ones who control revenue streams that were almost unaffected by piracy - movie theaters, concert venues, TV licenses etc. And also they're the ones who create stars and control them, and promote them to the worldwide status. Piracy costs them some money, but provides them with the biggest power and influence they ever had, because it destroys competition and creates situation where if you're not in their system, you cannot make money at all.

That's the irony of it. Pirates always point their fingers to Hollywood to justify them being thieves, and to make themselves look as some sort of "freedom fighters" who fight the oppression from huge greedy corps. While in reality they provide those "greedy corps" with the outstanding amount of power and influence, by killing the long tail of their competition and alternate income sources.