Quite the contrary is true. The record industry has made hundreds of thousands of dollars from settlement fees from the over twenty-thousand people it has sued for copyright infringement thuhs far. In addition, these lawsuits have raised awareness of the perils of unauthorized file sharing and brought them into the mainstream consciousness. Sure regular P2P users despise the record industry for this, but they despised them before the lawsuits as well. If the RIAA lawsuit against Jammie Thomas in Duluth, Minnesota taught anything, it is that the average citizen is far too ignorant and naive to see the RIAA as anything but a righteous victim of theft that deserves restitution and protection with laws such as the PIRATE Act.

“Why they would believe going through the DoJ would be any better for their reputation defies logic.”

It doesn’t defy logic because this is not about reputation. It’s about cost, efficiency, and deterrence. If the entertainment industry groups like the RIAA and MPAA can get law enforcement to do their bidding at taxpayers’ expense, the entertainment industry groups will be free of the hassle and expense of having to fund and prosecute these lawsuits themselves. In addition, having law enforcement prosecute these cases adds significantly to the deterrence factor of unlawful file sharing since law enforcement has a lot more power and tools at its disposal in both conducting these cases and in enforcing judgements won.

I certainly don’t agree with this proposed law, but I fully understand why the entertainment industry has lobbied so hard for it.

I personally wait until the game is 10 dollars before I buy it. I don’t see any reason to buy a new game at full price.