14 DAY TRIAL // This is the story of an American woman that used Kazaa to share mp3s. Of course, by doing that, she infringed copyrights. As seen on Gigwise she was fined $220.000, for illegally distributing more than 1.700 songs. She had been sued by several record companies and now she is forced to pay this huge fine; moreover, the woman, by the name of Jammie Thomas, will never be allowed to use a Kazaa account again.
In my opinion, this is just a 'small fish' these guy caught. Surely, she will never share any song on the web again, and probably her friends will be a bit frightened now, so chances for them to be/become pirates are scarce. However, I doubt this will thwart piracy. If you don't believe me, just get a random open source file sharing program from the web. If you join ANY hub, and see what those users share, then you're definitely realize that 1.700 songs is a small number.
No matter how hard security experts or law enforcers crack down on piracy, people that use the web for illegal downloads are just too many. And I was just thinking the other day - why is piracy still such a huge issue? Well, I think that it's basically because of people wanting something but not having enough money and also, because of poor software distribution. Like I've said - it's much more convenient (for some) to get free music, movies and software from the web and risk the consequences, than spend what they consider to be too much.
Furthermore, I think that software distribution is very poor in some countries; you have to search a lot to find some software in a shop, if you don't want to buy it from the web. I think that the most efficient way to fight piracy is stop giving people reasons to do it, rather than try to make the criminals pay.