Emotive response

El Reg is read worldwide... so it's understandable if the phrase "America's copyright ayatollahs" causes some emotive response in the US... after all just over 20 years ago the Iranians took over a US Embassy in Tehran and the US completely messed up a rescue mission - they've been upset by this ever since.

Therefore, an emotive response from our US friends is understandable... not that those in the UK can be too enamored by the Iranians and our own Royal Navy fiasco !

There is NO GUN and the "value" of the crime is different to the act of taking cash from a till at gunpoint. What I would like to see is the software companies prove the level of loss - e.g. Photoshop copies, I get so many emails offering me a copy for a few dollars. Come on, if we eradicated all the illegal software it wouldn't drive up sales of the copied expensive software, people would use The Gimp... similar case for MS Office... people would use Open Office etc. etc. Though one could argue the theft of a valuable vase at gunpoint is similar in nature (ie.. what is the actual "loss" - it's unlikely that the sale of vases is reduced), software has a low cost to repoduce. I'm against software theft (I work in the IT industry) but I think the punishment should fit the level of the crime.