@notheruser   

Quote
shutter - can I join your company? First preference is for Getaway Car Driver, but if that position is gone, I'm really good with a tea trolley!   

Unquote.

Sorry mate. The driving job is mine, however, you can ride along in the caravan behind, and keep the kettle on as we go round the roundabouts

Awesome! Count me in! We can stuff the caravan full of all the illegal downloaders we find, and force them to use a copy of Internet Explorer 1 on an unpatched copy of Windows 95 as a punishment until they've learned the error of their ways. If that doesn't act as a deterant, nothing will! 

Great,     but I got a better idea,    How about making them use  DOS based win3.1     with floppies.....            (fiendishly clever that ...  )now that will really make them sit down and think about the errors of their ways....

I like your thinking, but we could get into bother - I think this is a breach of Article 7 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." 

I'm glad to see this thread has taken a serious tone at last 

There weren`t no "civil and political rights" when I had to use DOS on my first IBM clone with Win3.1,      and no mouse either....      so why should "criminals" be treated any different?   

The 2 billion dollar question is, will PN have any choice?

What makes anyone think that P2P is the only channel that's been used for piracy?
If I were to send/receive a whole load of HTML commands/data, would I be browsing the web, doing a download of data that may or not be legal?

For my current P2P activity I always use encrypted connections - because I find that many people on other ISP's do not feel safe in sending/receiving data "in the clear" - even though the content is perfectly legal.

Perhaps I could send any TCP requests via a proxy server in a land where personal privacy is valued more highly?

The only certain outcome is that ways to circumvent any spying by ISP's will, if necessary be found.

If a company doesn't want anyone to access their data, then they are foolish to put it on the internet.