"Certain people are risk averse and it's cheaper to settle rather than to hire a lawyer to deal with it, even if you are innocent."
This is a fear campaign, like the one against Napster in 00' and likely wont solve anything. The only way the picture industry is going to fight a problem that's existed since the beginning of cinema (in the early 1900's, film reels were sometimes stolen as they were being transferred from theater to theater, and then shown for profit) is to get with the times. It took far too long for NetFlix to emerge, and iTunes is a less than perfect distributor. Legal distribution of a wide range of titles needs to become common place on the internet. Why Turner Classic movies has not made a deal with NetFlix is beyond me. This will not completely solve the problem, but it will curtail it for some people and return profits to where they belong. I would love to be able to go to the Warner Bros. website and stream any movies in their catalog for a price, or any of the big studios. Thieves have existed in society for a while (See The Thief of Baghdad, 1924), I don't like them anymore then anyone does, but a lot of honest people are also being lured into illegal downloading. These people are doing it out of convenience. Why is it, studio's making millions of dollars cannot set up a system that's better then a few pirates in Sweden?
