Instead of aggressively attempting to legislate piracy away and alienating consumers, a much better approach is to take a good look at why many people share copyrighted material.

To a great extent piracy can be interpreted as a marketing signal. Consumers see a mismatch between the offerings of the big media companies and their demands.

When the MP3-player (and iPod) first came along there was no way for people in some countries to legally buy songs to put on them.

The demand was huge but big media wasn’t serving it. We still see a mismatch today, and it’s one of the main motivations for people to pirate.

Piracy will always remain, but if the entertainment industries are smart enough they’ll eventually deliver services that make unauthorised downloading obsolete for most people.

In Europe, for example, many people don’t want to wait years before their favourite US shows air on TV, so they use file-sharing sites instead.

This is more about availability than the fact that these shows are free. The same is true for movies and music.

What the public wants is better services and increased availability at a fair price.