Media piracy and fake Kevlar vests are completely different issues. A few random points that should be considered about media piracy: 1) Copyright exists to en

Media piracy and fake Kevlar vests are completely different issues. A few random points that should be considered about media piracy: 1) Copyright exists to encourage the creation of new works - ie to benefit the public, not the creators per se. 2) Copyright is a two-edged sword. Maybe knowing that you can copyright a song encourages your creativity. But knowing that they can't reuse your song discourages someone else's. (And reuse of others' work is old - classical composers borrowed others' music or poetry frequently.) 3) Consumers should recognize that NEVER buying movies, music, etc, but ALWAYS pirating them, will mean that some media, like music, is much harder to make, and other media, like big-budget films, are impossible. So it's in fans' interest to buy at least sometimes. 4) On the other hand, media producers have not convincingly shown (to my knowledge) that piracy is really hurting them. Clearly not every download is a lost sale: demand at price 0 will always be greater than at price $15, and piracy may expose people to band which they later buy from (this has happened to me). A decline in music revenues may be partly linked to a rise in video games and other entertainment.