Actually, it's not always that easy, because it ISN'T necessarily illegal in the country where the server hosting the website is located. That's what the whole Pirate Bay case is about; deciding whether what they are doing (indexing torrent files) is illegal.

If it was as easy to do as you make it out to be, it would've been done ages ago

That, plus the fact that there is absolutely NO way to get them all. It's like prostitution or dope: as soon as you take out one crook, two more show up in their place.

You have to take into account the fact that not everything on these sites is illegal to begin with.  Not all torrents contain pirated material.  And to be blunt, you'll never stop pirate torrents from being accessed.  It's far easier to use a DRM scheme than to shut down access to pirated material.

Besdies the fact that it isn't illegal in the countries these sites are open in, they do provide great things like subbed anime episodes and so on. Even game patches sometimes need to be torrented, like the latest Company of Hero patch.

Piratebay, Isohunt et al don't host torrents, they simply provide a method to search them. This is something that GOOGLE does. So why don't you seen all these companies sueing google? Because Google has a LOT of money while these other, almost charity driven sites do not.

They call it Peer to peer for a reason...because its us, the public who are sharing these files, not some web based search engine. Would you like to see Google shut down too?

Piracy is for all intents and purposes a GOOD thing. A "pirate" would never have bought the game in the first place, meaning they company producing the game would not be losing any income. However, being able to try the game in full gives many pirates the experience and justification to purchase such games.

As an example...I am a pirate. I do so because i routinely live off $20 a week. I simply can't afford to spend 30-40 on a game and look forward to starving myself for the next week. I need to be sure that any game i purchase will be of a high enough quality, and have a longevity to match. Demo's only ever give you one or two levels so can be discounted from this equation. Should a game be sufficiently entertaining, i -WILL- buy it *cuddles his Sins of a solar empire and entrenchment*.

Don't think of piracy as a negative...thing of it as a positve. People who would never have bought a game do so because of the games quality...this propagates the future release of high quality games rather than most of the tripe we get shovelled. I'm sure if everyone could try a game -completely- prior to purchasing, you'd see the quality of games rising immesurably as poor titles would be dropped by companies in favour of actual crowd pleasers.

Ya, if you look at China and the problems blocking material they've had... that's easy mode compared to what you propose.

1. Closing down any one site wouldn't make any difference because others would just appear to take it's place
2. There are numerous other ways to pirate things besides torrents.
3. "Piracy" has existed as long as the software industry and will continue to exist for as long as there is one,
4. As noted by a previous poster, copyright laws differ between countries, and the thought of people trying to force any US law on to other countries just sickens me.

Shut down the piracy sites.

Excellent idea.  While we're at it we should shut down all the sites that offend people.  Personally I find all religious sites intolerable - those get to go first.  No one will object to that, they're offensive!

These sites are illegal, so the government should shut them down.

No, they're not illegal, and no the government shouldn't shut them down.  The government should stay the hell out of regulating the internet, let alone shutting down individual sites.  Your argument that the sites are illegal is retarded, and you're an idiot for making the argument.  What they're *doing* might be construed as aiding copyright infringment, but that's a civil matter not a criminal one.

Plus, with less piracy, publishers wouldn't have to punish legitimate custormers with crap DRM. Everybody wins, expect pirates, and those bastards dont count.

Oh, they'd still put it in.  You can't ever completely remove piracy without locking down the hardware (and even that doesn't always help), so there's always going to be a problem.

Some people are evil, and should be punished, but people like you who think they should impose their will on others are worse than the pirates.

In Soviet Russia, torrent sites download you...

Sorry for the obligatory Soviet Russia joke.

As other have said, "shut 'em down" ain't gonna happen. Those sites are hosted in countries where it isn't illegal. You could try blocking access from the USA - that might stop some. Most folks who go to these types of sites would quickly discover the workarounds.

DRM: unless it's "DRM-lite", it does far more to annoy the legitimate consumer that it ever does to dissuade the thief. Stardock's GOO is very interesting to me. Still waiting to read the nuts and bolts details, but it does sound promising.

In the long run, I'd say that the best solution is to price the product low enough that developers make the greatest return on their investment (by selling more product) while obviating the desire to pirate the product.

I think that's the key for all types of software. For example, look at music - CDs have no DRM, but were priced too high. That led to the advent of Napster, which led to...

15 years ago, a new release CD cost $15-20 retail. That was expensive, and the record companies just didn't get it. They lost a major opportunity. If a CD cost $5-10, there would be very little theft - it just wouldn't be worth the inconvenience.

That is same thing that the video/game distributors need to get their minds around. Yes, the medium and the distribution methods will evolve, but greatest rewards will go to those who create the most innovative methods of getting the product into the user's hands at a reasonable price.

Sure there are those that wouldn't pay no matter what. They will never be a market.

Okay, so it seems my idea wont work, but perhaps they can "convince" some of the torrent sites to stop putting pirated games on their sites. That would help a bit.

BitTorrent is WAY too slow for me. I torrented an old game once, and those shitheads infected my computer with malware.   I'd like to torrent Spore in order to help teach EA a lesson about SecuROM, but then I'm contradicting my own views.

there's so many things wrong with this idea...one being, exactly under whose jurisdiction are the web sites? what if the torrent site is hosted on a failover cluster on servers in different countries(kind of a theoretical there but still)? its the plague of the internet. it isnt really anywhere. there is no central hub even(just a network of routers on steroids).

also, posting the game itself isn't particularly illegal. using that torrent when you don't have a license to the software is.

LOL! Yeah, 'cause moderating the entire interweb will actually work.

In the end the pirates are not hurting companies enough to warrant the amount of spending needed to shut them down. Then there are places that won't restrict what they can share; then there is IRC and plenty of other ways of spreading piracy.

Piracy has both positive and negative aspects on this industry, and others. Pirates wouldn't have purchased the game in the first place. In some cases pirates wind up saying good things about games, other times they bash the games, but most of the time they just remain quiet about it.

"Pirates are underserved customers" - Valve. In the end, you stop piracy by giving them what they want. Most of the time piracy is done because games aren't made accessible to most people. Games are overpriced and demos are usually lacking. Steam/Valve are kind of the "Anti-piracy" guys in my eyes simply because they understand the customer and give them what they want. I wish companies would start dropping prices for a while just to see the results. Its proving successful on Steam, and I hope that others see that.

like sins?

I'm just gonna throw my 2 cents in. The best way to fight piracy without DRM is to make games that are: WORTH BUYING (not an exact copy of another game), worth the pirce we pay (not paying $60 for 3 hours of gameplay; would for $4), are not released with more bugs then there are cockroaches, have developer/publisher support (minimum to iron out post release bugs and balance), and customers are treated like customers (not ignored).

Hmm, I think Stardock fits this list very well.