Oh well, if that's whay you're saying then you're wrong.
Because both the guy who downloads a movie just to watch it, and the guy who does it to edit it and cut it and add a new soundtrack to it or whatever, to make a cultural statement or to create somehting 'new' out of that copyrighted movie without profit as a goal, are both equally pirates and guilty under the current copyright law. It's the same law for both of them, so it does have a place in this discussion. A very important one.
And you did all the assumptions. The wrong ones. But that never stopped you from posting them before, so why should it now, right ?

Wow, that's deep man. However, I think I'll choose to see it a different way - that you have an opinion and decided to back it up with pointless unsubstantiated conjecture that contributed nothing to the discussion. Anyway, as you were.

I'm not saying one is less legal than the other, I'm saying that hiding under a guise of "it's ok because we're creating with it!" is stupid because if you want to create something out of it, either protect yourself by buying the product and using it under fair use laws, or classifying it as a parody, or ask for permission to use it.
And, I'm also pointing out that the guise doesn't work either because the majority of people who shared copyrighted material on there did it without the intent of ever creating anything, but just consuming.

Actually, he's right. If they're going to sue TPB for linking to copyrighted material, then they're more or less morally obliged to sue Google as well, for doing exactly the same thing. Why should they ignore one offender, but not another? If all are equal to the law, then all must answer to the law, right? The answer is, of course, that Google has money coming out of its ears (assuming Google has ears), while TPB does not. Also, TPB is a nice, big, fat, juicy scapegoat of a target, that everyone can agree on. A similar lawsuit against Google would probably be viewed by the majority of people as being completely ridiculous.
Also, what's with some of you people and quoting? If you're responding to a huge big-ass post, just quote the relevant bits, not the entire damn thing. I'm glad I have a freewheeling mouse, otherwise it'd take forever to scroll to the bottom of one of these threads.

I try, but I usually like to only cut out stuff, and if they made a large post and I can hit all points, I usually do.

Go back a couple of posts, and you'll see i got his point on the Google thing after he provided a more detailed description of what he meant.
And i'm sorry about the quoting :)
I know it gets annoying sometimes

But what does that mean, "can't control"? If Google can't control what material they link to, how can TPB? "Oh", I hear you say, "because Google is so much bigger". So... the main fault of TPB is that they have linked to too much material to ignore, but too little to claim that they can't control it all. And yes, I deliberately put words in your mouth, and no, I'm in no way implying that that is your viewpoint. You were merely handy for letting me throw that argument into the fray ;-)
Also, about YouTube, and how copyrighted material is handled there, did you read this post of mine?

Yes you are putting words in my mouth! I'll forgive you on this occasion...
I did read your post (although thanks for the link, it was a while ago!) and I do agree with that point of view. People always mention Nine Inch Nails in a similar way, although I prefer to buy a CD, it does provide very good publicity.
Another thing to look at is Radiohead's album "In Rainbows" which you could download for whatever you wanted to pay (free being one of the options available), and despite them making a decent amount of money from that (and probably a fair whack from the CD sales), they are declining to do it again. Not sure why, but at the time there were a few voices moaning that most people took the "free" option, even if many others payed £5-10 for it.

If you're saying that the 'creating stuff' argument doesn't apply to many TPB users, or most 'pirates' in general because in those cases it's just a lame excuse to get free stuff, that's stating the obvious, but if that was your point, ok.
But that doesn't change anything regarding the questions raised about cp law and IP by this trial, and does not provide any answers to the question why do millions of people keep breaking this one particular law.
People discussing these issues are not focusing on the TPB thing only.
This trial just made things more visible for everybody, and an 'excuse' to talk about this issues more in depth, but the discussion about cp law and IP would exist even if the TPB didn't, and will carry on even if TPB ends.

I've found that messing around with quotes sometimes just screws up the formatting of the post. I wish GOG would spend some time and fix this or better yet just implement a more standardized forum.
</hijack>

that is what I was saying, but some people here obviously wanted to hide under the guise of "I'm creative so copyright laws don't apply!"

And do you honestly feel that if stealing physical items was that easy like downloading, wouldn't they have a new Porsche 911 they ever wanted to have?
Tell me, how would it be, that if someone wanted to "steal" some software, he had to break into a building at night, find the place where the desired software is, take it and run away? Do you think that software companies would have thousands of housebreakings every day?

Why the hell would you want a physical copy?

Not if it specifically deprived others of the Porcshe 911 that they bought.