<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>The only thing stupid is all the self righteous P to P guys thinking the government even cares about your little fire sharing. From the article...
"No one at the hearing connected P-to-P trading with the financing of terrorism or organized crime"
They're talking about stuff like say, me driving down to Rowland Heights to Game-X and the Chinese guy at the counter would get out this huge folder with every single Playstation game ever produced and I can buy them at $10-20, since it probably cost the guy $2 to get the illegal copy of the game. This is where the 900% markup profit comes from as opposed to a profit of less than $10 you'd expect at a real gaming place, which is no more than a 20% markup for a typical $50 game.
Some Americans are so blissfully unaware of the piracy going on out there, you think your little file trading P to P stuff is the biggest source of pirating and everyone in the world is after you. Wrong. They're talking about the professional guys in like China or Taiwan or heck any Asian country in general that has dedicated factories just cranking this stuff out for a fraction of what it should cost. Before I left Taiwan, you couldn't buy a legitmate copy of a game even if you slapped the local dealer's head with hundred dollar bills because they simply don't exist. You don't think that's powerful? Do you have any idea of just how big some of those pirating business really are? Ever notice why you don't see game sales numbers for Hong Kong or Taiwan even though these are certainly gaming-heavy countries?
Some pirating companies, like Son May, is like the Mafia. Everyone knows what they're doing is illegal. They've their headquarter address printed on the back of every CD they sell. And yet no one can do anything about it. Well, it's probably because the Taiwanese government refuses to comply with international intelligent property laws. So yes, this is exactly what the guys are talking about. Some countries out there are willing to back up piraters, and if you think that's a good thing, you should know that every game Taiwan has ever seen is stolen from Japan somewhere because no one wants to waste money developing an original one since you can't possibly expect to get any money back (aside from the cheesy ripoffs and MMORPG are somewhat successful since they're on a per monthly basis). If US and Japan are not so anti-piracy, you wouldn't expect to see any games developed, ever. The Final Fantasies and Zeldas of the world can't exactly survive in a world where you can't sell your games for very much.</div>
