[johnl]

You could model after the pharmaceutical companies where the drug gets a waiting period before generics can compete. Use 12 months, Require downloadable files be zipped with a header that can be searched and automatically deleted.

[Natsu]

Everything on the internet must be downloaded before it gets to you. Even if you suppose there's some censor out there looking for anything with the "copyright bit" set, it still wouldn't work, because so long as you could send two different messages that would pass some censor, you could encode one of them as a 0, the other as a 1, then do a horribly inefficient data transfer that bypasses whatever controls are in place.

You may think that's ridiculous, but things of that sort already exist. For example, there's a way to use DNS as a tunnel for other data. Yes, doing that is crazy.

If I'm incredibly pessimistic about this, it's because I've watched the long history of failure as many smart people attempted, then utterly failed, at doing this. One side must be perfect. The other needs just one opening. Games like that are so massively unfair that the only winning move is not to play. And you don't have to play: I've already pointed out how some artists have adapted and are doing good business. People want to support them. That's the way forward.

Maybe I'm wrong and someone will invent some magic technology that stops piracy. But anyone who is holding their breath waiting for it is very likely to suffocate. There are people looking for the way forward. It's just not a technical solution.