[stonetools]

Ah. So you think that when the *current* round of pirate site hosts are collected and imprisoned, nobody else will start running pirate sites?

I notice you failed to define "pirate sites." Can you define a category of activities that makes a site subject to criminal investigation, and separates it from, for example, secure business data exchanges or open hosting of creative content?

Is google a pirate site for giving people links to free bootleg downloads hosted elsewhere? If not, why is TPB a pirate site? Is Amazon a pirate site for hosting plagiarized ebooks?

I don't think the government is going to have much problem defining " pirate sites" . This is maybe a nice philosophical question here on the intertubes but in TRW the governments are closing down pirate sites and prosecuting the offenders. Google and Amazon have lobbyists and lawyers but sooner rather than later laws will be passed barring Google from posting ads to pirate sites.Who knows, maybe they'll even hold Google liable for all the clearly illegal content uploaded to YouTube.

I don't mean that any particular case can't be tried until exact damages are established; however, to justify substantial expense and other resources on prosecution, we need some measure of the value gained from that prosecution.

According to the Administration statement, determining the cost of losses through piracy is difficult-but not impossible. It's enough to justify government action , and that's what counts.

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders

Now that's in the middle of a statement that says that legislation and LE isn't enough -the statement is kind of calling for everyone to kumbah yah and work together, which, while a worthy sentiment, is unlikely. What's clear is that your preferred solution-ignore piracy and focus on other things- isn't the Administration approach. Indeed, the day after the statement, they took down Megaupload. Clearly , they think the costs of prosecution justify the approach. So do the UK, French, Swedish and NZ governments.
What's happened is that the Internet has grown up. It's no longer a techie plaything. There are billions of dollars of commerce at issue and businesses and rights holders must feel that their property rights are secure before they are going to invest and do business. They're not going to "trust their customers" or anyone else. In business the rule is " In God we trust: everyone else enters into legally enforceable agreements". IOW, for the free markets for flourish, the rule of law will have to be extended throughout the Internet. Its time for us to grow up and face that fact.