I'd say terrorism being funded by piracy is pretty feasible - not so much the new wave of piracy, i.e. BitTorrent - but counterfeit music CD's etc are a *huge* money spinner. Most of the piracy revolves around China and India like you say, but I recall that the IRA indeed funded itself in part via counterfeit goods (not just electronic copies, clothes etc). Remember also one of the biggest and overlooked hotbeds of terrorism is Indonesia, where piracy is rife.

TBH I don't even use pirate software bar a few bits and bobs here where I have objected to the heinous retail costs.

Piracy maybe does not fund terrorism, but it still goes hand in hand with crimes such as drug dealing and other sales of counterfeit goods. Trying to legitimise piracy is foolish in my eyes, it is still illegal and more often than not tied up to other criminal endeavours.

*growls*

Something is not stolen, that was not sold in the first place dammit!!

I f**king hate corporate thinking. I could go on and on about corporate asswipes, tis why I got out of management. You guys didn't think I really drove busses because I was truly stupid did you.

Someday, I will tell you all some of the horror stories I had to endue because of snot noses who "knew so much"

*sighs*

It is so hard to explain in such a way as to sound credible.

I attended numerous meetings with the management staff. The corporate bigwigs were always commenting on how we were losing money this way or that way. I kept thinking, "If you had to run this business, like you force us to run our households THEN you could talk about money shortages"

This one meeting was 2 part. One at fiscal year beginning, one at fiscal year end. At the beginning, they predicted that our company was going to make 5 million dollars. ( I am using 5 million cause I cannot recall actual figures, but the numbers will suffice (

At years end, after they paid all their debts they made 4 million. that was 1 million profit after they paid all incurred bills, payroll and materials.

They made 1 million dollars free and clear.. You know what they had to say??? THEY LOST ONE MILLION!!. They kept saying it over and over, how they lost one million dollars cause they did not achieve their predicted 5 million. I was so pissed I couldn't stand it any longer and left.

In other words, you cannot predict whom will use what till they actually purchase it so you have not truly lost anything, you just failed to acquire it.

I cannot make it any clearer than that Lep. Until you have had to deal with corporate thinking, you will not truly know what I am saying. If you have already dealt with this then you do know, but being an honest type, you feel that theft is theft.. PERIOD. Which I can also understand. Then theres the third option.. YOU ALSO THINK like a corporate person.. Which is a subject that I am not ready to discuss with you. Sadly I am forced to take ageism into account on choice #3. You are not old enough for me to do so and have any meaningful resolution. You would need to have to put in 20+ years of working for them first to have any commonalities with me.

Hope that made some sense.

[edit] DAMMIT, why did I get logged out just now??

On a side note, Hezbollah is not really a terrorist organization; well, the question is still under debate right now, but they never participated in worldwide bombings; they never even targeted civilians as far as I know. They're just a militia who attacks Israelis, and US troops whenever they happen to be in the region. Ok, they're anti-US, but I don't think the word "terrorist" applies.