Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue Web sites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists...

This is a quote from the Obama administration. It's emblematic of an approach — a mindset, although I dislike that word — that's counterproductive. It assumes that "piracy" is a big problem and goes from there. I'm not convinced that premise is valid.

The main issue is providing creative people with ways to distribute their work and hopefully make some money from it. Business models from the previous century were based on providing access to distribution when it took a lot of money and networking to get a book into bookstores or a new single into record stores or a video production on air (on one of only three or fewer TV channels in most US markets). The access providers competed not so much with content as with controlling limited access to distribution. Now that distribution is available to everyone, their businesses are obsolete. They could compete on the quality of content, but that's a different business and means jettisoning a great deal of the structure of their existing businesses. 

Not to mention that based on a lot of what I've read, "criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists" is a pretty good description of a significant part of the recording and film industries.