The Power of Software

One of the reasons that fighting Internet theft of copyrighted material is going to be nearly impossible is due to the ability of software to encapsulate skill.

In the world outside the Internet, companies can design a product's security to keep honest people honest and to defeat the typical thief. The number of people that are able to defeat a system can be kept to a minimum for a fairly small amount of money, usually. The information to defeat said product can usually kept isolated as well. Even if the information were to leak out, the 2 previously mentioned parties would not be able to take advantage of it.

On the Internet, as long as one person can break a security "fence", he can take his knowledge encapsulate it into software and enable people with much lower skill levels to also "jump the fence". In addition, a virtually free distribution system ensures that it is quite easy and inexpensive to provide this information and ability to anyone that wants it.