Replying to How to deal with online piracy and its bigger implications.

Been thinking about this a lot, and if you haven't, you should. Is there a solution to the situation we have currently? File sharing is huge and no law will ever fully stop it. I'm sure when Metallica sued Napster, eventually resulting in Napster shutting down the music industry thought they won. Obviously that was far from the truth.

Now with countries around the world trying to tackle the problem with all sorts of anti pitacy laws, this is starting to feel a lot like Americas war on drugs. Instead of trying to fight, why don't they evolve and work with file sharing? Netflix is commercial free, but it comes with a price tag - which makes sense. Hulu is free, but has ads, which also makes sense. I wonder why people still pay for cable tv with ads when you can watch online for free without ads (illegally sure). If cable tv providers offer a free option with ads, or a paid for option that is ad free, it would be a step in the right direction. Also, if Hollywood production companies and record labels start working with torrent sites like pirate bay - offering their movies for free, with a system in place where they make money per seed or something along those lines. God knows pirate bay would be a better place if the side bar ads were for the latest blockbuster movie instead of some trashy porn site. I'm just throwing out some ideas I have right now - I know there are issues I'm not addressing.

Anyone else been thinking of ways to solve this problem without goverents resorting to seizing people's electronics to protect the interests of rich corporations? I think this is a big step that needs to happen for the Internet to become something that can be taken seriously as a place to conduct business.

Side note - until we figure out how to properly use the Internet in a real, practical manner, we still haven't reached the 'technological' age, but instead we are still in the aftermath of the industrial age and living in a society with outdated laws and mentalities. If you think about it, it took WW1 to fully propel us into the Industrial Age out of necessity, what is going to happen this time around to force a economic and societal change for the tech/environmental age to finally become somethin that exists, not just something that is talked about?