Is the Government really cracking down on Downloading??

I don't know whether this topic belongs in this forum but it does have to do with media or should i say the dling of it. So please if this topic belongs somewhere else, any mod....put it there.

My question is simply as my title states: Is the government really cracking down on the copyrighted dl of materials.

I know its probably been brought up before and I even heard about it before as well, that the government puts out its own trackable dl's and whoever is unlucky enough to dl that file they get busted.

I never paid much attention to it but my friend who dls a lot is all of a sudden quite shaken when he discovere that several people in my little state of Hawaii have already been busted including a 10 year old girl! So that makes me wonder is it true? Have you guys been seeing this type of activity in your areas?

Also I mostly dl torrents, are torrents or direct dls more suseptible to this kind of tracking?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Very great discussion here guys, and I can see a lot of points being fired back and forth.

I do generally dl things that are not licenced by the US yet. But for dling whole anime series and such that are licenced I do that rarely. And for my music I think most of the stuff I get cannot be found in a lot of places because even though the lyrics are in english they are usually some european band.

But as for movies and such I didn't dl much back then but I have started to and according to your points it seems I should really cut that down.

Does anyone go to tokyotosho ? I dl a hell of a lot of stuff from there.

And what about site like rapidshare and mega upload??? what kind of sites are they considered to be?

How ya doing, buddy?

Its great that this whole discussion pooped up form a question, but I think we are getting off topic here

My main question is are you people seeing an INCREASE in people being charged with downloading of copyrighted material.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.