I’ve given up getting annoyed by them, but if people trafficking is such a bad thing then why not make it easier for people to move around- then they won’t be subject to criminal gangs.

Same with drugs, if drug smuggling is so bad then legalise the trade in drugs.

Are you suggesting that Chinese immigrants “of presumably dubious legal status”, currently peddling illegal DVDs, are likely to have arrived here on their own steam, without the involvement of people smugglers?

I also doubt that any one of the people you see selling the DVDs arrived with sufficient investment required to set up DVD copying facilities on the massive scale required. Well, if not, then someone else must have come up with the money, which now becomes a de-facto organised criminal activity.

One last point, do you believe that the Chinese guy you see in the pub has genuinly chosen this occupation? Or is it more probable that they are forced into it to pay back the people who smuggled them in.

All together, I think that there is a hell of a lot of social misery perpetrated so that someone can watch the latest DVD for a fiver.

And, no, I don’t care about Disney’s or anyone else’s intellectual property rights.

When it comes to what musicians allow and do not allow with their music, it is the record companies, is it not, that own the copyright of their recorded works? So musicians can pledge not play Guantanamo live (how thoughtful), but AFAIK have no direct say over recorded copies of their works being played there.