[stonetools]

I don't doubt their intentions; I question their ability to achieve useful results

Well, can you give them something more than 8 years? It took 40 years to bring order to the Wild West and even longer to supress Atlantic piracy, didn't it? Eventually, the rule of law came to both areas.

In order to make an actual difference against piracy, rather than the occasional flash of "WE CAUGHT A BIG ONE!!!", we'll need an overhaul of the entire legal system in relation to the internet. "Marshal riding into town" won't work; we will never be able to afford as many marshals as there are towns. The internet is a LOT bigger than the "old west."

Part of that overhaul would mean defining legal activities that currently are often assumed to be "piracy"--establishing a solid foundation of what's acceptable for educational use, what counts as transformative and parody and is fair use, what's allowed for personal noncommercial use, what kind of sharing among friends and family is permitted.

Because right now, people are told that stripping the DRM from their Kindle books so they can read them on their Nook is a crime, punishable by up to 5 years in prison or $500,000 fines. That's ridiculous. And people decide, well, if I'm going to commit an act that might get me 5 years in prison because I WANT TO READ WHAT I BOUGHT, I might as well share it with someone else. Might as well download another twenty books for free... it's not like the penalty is *more* for downloading from a torrent than for cracking the DRM on my own.

To enforce the law more widely, the enforcers need widespread public support. For that, first the enforcers need to convince the majority of the public that they're not criminals, that their friends aren't criminals. They have to convince people that the law follows common sense, or people will ignore it.

Outside the MR bubble, they arguably DO have widespread public support. The downloaders and uploaders have had a chance to argue that before a jury of their peers that somehow the law is wrong , that DRM is an impermissible violation of the "rights" of "purchasers", that mass violation of the IP rights of digital media artists is somehow permissible , that we in live in a new era whereby we can disregard "outmoded" laws BECAUSE THE INTERNETT!!!. The juries returned verdicts against these pioneers in every case-and apellate courts upheld the verdicts.I predict similar results when pirate site holders get to try these same arguments before US juries.
You have a problem with the law? Then do the right thing and petition the democratically elected law makers-don't flout the law.

Certainly. And whose laws should be deciding what counts as piracy? Whose police forces will take the risk of arresting possibly violent pirates? Where will they be prosecuted?

Why should other countries see this as anything other than an American attempt to stabilize its floundering empire by finding yet another excuse to push US troops into their territories?

Apparently they don't see it that way -which is why anti-piracy legislation is passing in one country after the other, and the DOJ got Megaupload's boss with NZ help.

Laos has no copyright. The Marshall Islands have no copyright. Does that mean anyone is free to set up a server in those places and distribute any material they want?

If not... why is it legal for me to publish something online that's illegal in Australia, but not legal for them to publish something online that's illegal in the US?

(Shrug) Laws-including IP and obscenity laws- vary from place to place. Does that mean that we can't enforce IP law anywhere?

There's a big difference between "they're scam artists and criminals" and "they're the same types of guys who cause these other problems."

Not all criminals have the same motives. Not all scams are run for the same reasons, or have the same ways of getting profit. The same methods won't work against them.

Fix spam, fraud, and harassment, and patching the holes that allow unauthorized, financially-damaging file transfers will be easy. Refuse to fix the *big* problems, the ones that affect the majority of users online (how many people hide their email addresses when posting in forums and blogs?) and the random strikes at large file-sharing sites will continue to fail to accomplish anything useful.
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I think ALL Internet related crime should be prosecuted-including copyright infringement- even if that particular offence is excused by some. How's that?