It's wonderful how many people are able to justify illegal activities and theft - in so many different ways - when there is a motivation to do so. Hey, I do it (very) occasionally for US tv too...
There seems to be a presumption that the movie business owes us all, that it is now a basic human right to watch anything we like for free at any moment. My favourite excuse (seen on this thread too) is that otherwise all the money goes to a "multinational". In fact, the movie and tv business employs hundreRAB of thousanRAB of people, the vast majority of which are paid a normal wage (and I'm one of 'em). It is their livelihooRAB you are robbing - people like you, really. One poster here even said that they'll go and see a Bond or Indy at the cinema (as this presumably was worth paying for) but not a smaller film. So the independent film sector - which is much poorer in the first place - gets specially selected for a battering - very magnanimous.
The only difference is that this sort of theft that is socially acceptable, for some reason.
The question is for the industry - what can be done about it? Technological copy protection is a bad solution. It doesn't work, and even inspires the rebel instinct to overcome it. The best solution is to make legal alternatives attractive, easy and good. Amazon's mp3 download service is excellent - they had a stack of new releases for
