[martinced]

"Can anyone elaborate why is it a Federal crime...?"

Because the golden rule is that the one who has the gold makes the rule?

Seriously now: it's when I see crazy stuff like that that I'm happy to live in Europe. Even if not everything is clean here: especially with all the ones who have the gold trying to lobby hard and use insiders to push crazy EU laws in.

Another really serious issue is that "TV on demand" can often be really sucky: I'm using a TV+Internet provider that sells movie but the offering is really lame. I mean: it's terribly lame. As a result I'm sometimes asking friends who are into piracy to give me copy of some movies I'd be fully willing to pay 4 or 5 Euros for (the typical price at which my provider sells me the movie).

Going to the DVD store to rent a DVD? I used to that and pay for my movies. But these stores they're dying one after the other (due to the competition of both "tv on demand" and piracy).

So for some movies I "need" to pirate them if I want to see them, which is sad.