This will not bother the thieves or the people who watched pirate copies. Most will assume movies and music are free, that the people who make them are paid by the government (which in the case of the arts in Australia is largely true). Others will argue that like, property is theft, and oh-my-god, you know, the money goes to corrupt capitalists and hey, cool stuff should be free, dude.

And just about everybody, except people who lose money when the movies and music they make are stolen, will agree. Because copying without paying is so universal that arguing against it is considered abhorrent behaviour.

In Sweden there is a political movement devoted to what it claims is the human right to share films and songs online. In accordance with the EU Convention on Stating the Bleeding Obvious it's called the Pirate Party and it has a seat in the European Parliament where its MP probably sits with the members who justify rorting their travel allowance on the grounds they are underpaid.

There is even an English vicar who says poor people should steal, but only if they are really broke, mind, and solely from big retailers who can cover the loss.

Whatever the ethics of these sorts of arguments, they are economic idiocy. If enough people steal, stores will reduce ranges and impose full body scans at checkouts, which will mean it will take days to get through the queue at Coles and Woolworths, whereas now it only takes hours.

And unless the entertainment industry works out a way to reduce the rate at which people steal films and music, artists will wonder why bother and produce less.

This would not be altogether a bad thing if it saved the world the horror of a Lady Gaga-Michael Buble duets album. And only adolescent girls will mind if there are no more vampire flicks but, given their attention spans, not for long.

But thieves don't just copy the crook stuff, and the more that is stolen, the fewer the films and albums that will be made. While it may piss off the pirates, there is no getting around it: in life you get what you pay for.