It doesnt matter if they shut down all sites. It doesnt matter how many forms of copy protection they try to add to the physical copies. It doesnt matter if they make it illegal to own a cd or dvd that isnt manufactured by an official source.
Its all a waste of time. The legal system vs technology. My money is on technology. No matter how much you improve the trap, someone will invent a new way of escaping.
Instead of charging random companies and indiviuals with crimes, they need to rethink how they make their money. The old system just doesnt work anymore. Ask Rupert Murdoch how many newspapers he sells now.. a crapload less than he used to.. so he is trying to create a system that actually works in todays environment. The music industry obviously needs to adapt too - its not going to stop the trend, it needs to learn to ride the waves. I-tunes is obviously an attempt at doing this, perhaps some real competition would be useful, given Apples attitude to any format not their own.
I copy DVDs. I rent them, thats my contribution. I copy them, so I can watch them again later at my leasure. I dont have a moral problem with this, they stay in my computer and only people in my household watch them. I wont waste the cash buying DVDs, even blank ones.
I record TV series. They are recorded from free to air TV, almost all have station watermarks on them. If I can watch them free on TV, I certainly dont intend paying to watch them again. The royalties have already been paid by advertisers, via the TV station, and the artists, production company and everyone else involved have already made a bunch of money.
I dont believe I have infringed copyright laws at all. In the old days, when we had vinyl, we used to buy the album, record it to cassette and use the cassette in the car. Of course partially because you couldnt play vinyl in the car, but also so that the original vinyl recording remained in good condition. I would argue that its unreasonable to be required to buy both the vinyl and the cassette. This same principle applies to any kind of home made copy in my view, and illegal it might be but immoral it aint.
The same could be said for recording TV on the old VHS or even digitally with a PVR. If you record a TV show with your PVR, you are making a copy. Is this immoral?
Now, if I was copying and selling this stuff, sure, I would be acting immorally... but making a copy of something I have paid for, for my use only, seems perfectly reasonable to me. So is making a copy of a TV show so I can watch it when its more convenient. Advertisers are paying the royalties here, and they dont care if you watch the ads immediately or later. In fact, it gives them extra advertising. In no way by recording the show for watching later have I deprived any person or company of any income, or abused their intellectual property.
Downloading is just an extension of all this, a part of the modern society we live in, and the production industries need to adapt. I download occasionally too, I admit it, but I have deprived no-one of any cash. If I couldnt have got it free, I wouldnt have got it, period. Ergo, if I dont download it, they get exactly the same amount of cash from me... none.
I mostly listen to the radio anyway lol...
That woulld have taken damn near as long to put together as most of my diatribes 
