Piracy is an interest term, it suggests that someone is stealing something and making money out of it. However the "piracy" that exist on the internet is rarely about making money, it is about sharing with our friends and family. If I have an interesting book that I have read I usually lend it to my friends to read. In real life this is called sharing, if I did this on the internet it would be called Piracy.
This sharing has been going on for many years. Libraries are set up to do this and no-one calls them "pirates". Even those companies which do this for music, movies and TV shows have been doing it for years. They first buy the product and then broadcast it to whoever is listening/watching, usually wrapped in commercials. These radio and TV stations are not called "pirates" either. However if ordinary people take the same material, digitise it, and put it on the Internet to be shared they are called "pirates".
The issue is not one of the actions or intents of individuals, it is one of the scale of the practise is a threat to the business model of the existing distributors. (If you understand the principle behind 6 degrees of separation you will immediately see why this is a real concern to the established business model.) In the short term these producers are losing money and this is a cause for concern. They have reacted as all large corporations react, through the legal protections they have built around them, ie copyright laws. And if the laws don't work they will get the laws changed.
Apart from individuals caught in the crossfire, why should this be of cause for concern? The large distributors will adjust their business model in time, and consumers will be able to get the material legally in the form of their choice. Music is already proceeding down this path with online stores such as Itunes, Spotify etc. TV shows are starting to be streamed on the Internet (eg ABC) and sites such as Hulu are highly successful. In fact 33 Billion videos were watched on the Internet in December 2009 alone. The issue here for most people is that only some people in the world have access (Hulu is US only, Spotify is Europe only), while this is the case for many "piracy" is the only option to get material in the format of choice.
My issue with this is not about copyright, it is about the integrity of the Internet. Recently IInet won a court battle which means that currently ISP are not responsible for the traffic on their system. This does not mean that the situation cannot be changed. It is technically possible to monitor the traffic, and where something can be done, someone will think that it should be done (often for the best of intentions). Governments have been trying to rein in the Internet for years either for political purpose or for social (eg monitor pedophile behaviour). Either way the result will be the same and the integrity of the Internet, once compromised will never be returned again.
Some might argue this is a small price to pay, however the price could be the entire concept of "cloud" computing. For many the key issue in deciding whether to store data on the "cloud" is whether the data is as secure as storage by traditional means. This raises two issues: firstly whether the information that has been stored can be legal available in the country where it is created but not in the country where it is stored (or visa versa). Recently Source Forge (a repository for open source code) had to close access to some countries to comply with US law. This could have the affect of denying access to the writer due to their country of origin.
The other issue is not just about the how and where the data is stored, but also who is monitoring the traffic. If the principle is accepted that the the traffic can and should be monitored, then there can never be a guarantee that the data on the cloud is secure.
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