Not to encourage the whole warez and piracy issue...
Look back at when napster was in the prime (pre-metallica lawsuit). There was about 2 million users tops on it (just a guess). After it was exploited in the newspapers, those numbers doubled every single day until napster was shut down.
Now, before Bill Gates and the whole piracy thing got out of hand, there was trading of warez and pirated programs but not at the level it is today...
Once upon a time, there were places that you could store upto 100MB of stuff for free on the internet. That fed the http:// warez scene. Warez message boards had a couple of thousand people on them (for the really big ones) and what have you. In reality piracy wasn't that big of a deal considering back when Bill Gates was robbing people for their o/s, he was complaining that people shouldn't get software for free...
Now if you turn on the tv, read the paper, browse the internet, etc... the whole big thing is piracy and warez, secure the computers from hackers, fill out 50 pages of crap to activate your program and have your email filled with spam forever...
Before you all start thinking of flaming me and what have you, here is my point:
If piracy wasn't a big deal, would the public be so fast to accept having to phone in to activate their operating systems? Allow the software companies to have 'call homes' hidden in the code someplace so they may access your computer at any given time?
Did communists really have it that bad? Or was that propaganda made up by demicratic countries because they were scared of the acceptence of it and they would be as equal as the next person in the long run? (The same could go the other way also).
In order to justify an idea as insane as that, first you must make the public believe a more insane idea so your idea is considered normal.
The truth is, if they stopped the whole piracy fight tomorrow, piracy would drop dramaticlly with in 6 month over all.
Now the people that are selling cd's on ebay and in the streets, that is a different story. They should be placed in jail for making money off of other people's work.
