You're absolutely correct Mr. Jones. In fact, the articles you've penned on this subject have enlightened me and helped me to change my torrenting ways. I always try to get things on public servers first. There is safety in numbers and (relative) anonymity.

You've also helped to turn me off to IP blockers like Peer Guardian. It's a rather ridiculous concept that's impossible to implement when you think about it - and actually makes it easier for anyone with access to the block list to find the more serious pirates, because what will PG users (for example) have in common? As a group, none of the blocklist IPs will be connecting to those PG users... so, by process of elimination, the anti-pirate just has to examine the group of IPs that isn't utilizing the blocklist IPs. You've just made their work easier for them if you use an IP blocker.

Some incentive to buy, huh? And what about the folks who own the physical albums but don't know how to rip them to their computers, so they download them instead? There are more of those than you'd think.

Did anyone actually read the article? This isn't the best of news. Some quotes:

"[The Judge] swallowed the prosecution line completely that initial seeders were causing major damage to the copyright holders, and particularly uploaders who uploaded before the official release date."

"We were further told that, if the defendants had not had such good references and strong legal representation, the Judge would have seriously considered a custodial sentence."

Especially since this will be used as a precedent, things could easily devolve in the future. We're left with the impression that the judge totally bought into the industry's BS arguments, and that the uploaders were lucky to get off with the sentences they did.