...."It's unfortunate that the entertainment industry devotes so much energy to supporting punitive efforts at the federal and state level, instead of putting energy into licensing their content for P2P distribution so those same people could be turned into customers," said Philip Corwin, an attorney with Butera and Andrews in Washington D.C., and who represents Kazaa distributor Sharman Networks. "The Pirate Act effectively gives government the authority to use taxpayer dollars to bring civil actions against file sharers on behalf of copyright holders."

All these efforts by Congress to impose severe penalties are misguided, said P2P United Executive Director Adam Eisgrau.

"As the 40 percent increase in downloads over the last year makes alarmingly clear, like it or not file sharing is likely to (continue) on a massive scale no matter how many suits are brought and what the fine print of copyright or criminal law says," Eisgrau said. "Second, putting a tiny percentage of tens of millions of American file sharers behind bars or in the poorhouse won't put one new dime in the deserving pockets of artists and other copyright owners." [Wired] Okay, so randomly selecting file sharers and extorting about $3000 each out of them isn't enough? We should throw them in jail also? This approach has certainly been effective in the war on drugs. This is absolutely absurd and I can't believe the constituents of any of these industry lickspittles will stand for this kind of insanity.

I am 100% behind efforts to crack down on real "pirates," that is those who are making money by selling illegal copies of copyrighted works, but to criminalize file sharing is about as stupid, misguided, and PANDERING to narrow interests as it gets.