Interesting.

Apparently, downloading a torrent tracker file is cause for copyright infringement. That's weird. A torrent file isn't copyrighted. It doesn't contain any content. Under the INDUCE laws, one could probably argue that it's meant to gain access to infringing material, but those laws are meant to crack down on producers, not downloaders.

So basically, this is legally kind of FUD, but it's enough to get ISPs het up, and that's all taht matters.

Anyway, this isn't very smart on the part of content creators. Their legal fees and staff costs to try and figure out who's downloading what an lean on people to stop is going to vastly outweigh any increased HBO subscriptions or DVD sales.

People really don't get it. A comment from that post:

How about paying $10 a month or less? How about not stealing? Is that so crazy?

It's not stealing. There's nothing to "take." It's information, not property. When I get it, you don't loose it.

Furethermore, if I wasn't going to pay for it anyway, then there's not even any profit loss. In fact, there's a loss in profit in preventing me from downloading because then I don't tell my friends that show XYZ is awesome and get them excited about watching it. I'm also less likely to watch it and then shell out for the DVD because I'm tired of trying to be a database manager and buy hard drives to store all the media I enjoy.

Idiots.