You may not be able to tell what your children is doing 100% of the time but it seems to me that its a lot easier to control the distribution of money at the parents end. If your kids don't have money then they can't buy the game or have to ask you for it.

The exception IMHO is if kids get a job. Ultimately, if they get a job and make their own money then they are already showing the signs of maturity to becoming independent and have the right to make a decision with the money they make.

I would never tell anyone how to raise their kids and every child is different but there are sensible alternatives out there then making more laws.

Is it okay for you to hire a gardener for 20 hours of work and have him actually work 10 hours and take a break for 10 hours?

Some people may feel that that analogy doesn't have any bearing cause its not in an IT field. Say, if you decide to hire a web design consultant, would you be okay with paying him out of your own pocket for a 40 hour week if it includes surfing the web, chatting with friends over the phone, taking long lunches etc?

This doesn't mean you need to chain someone down to their job and certainly taking small breaks throughout the day is needed just to mentally refocus, but if you don't feel comfortable paying someone 40 hours for 20 hours of work, why would an employer be okay about it?

Food for thought.

Cryptome can be found here (at the moment):
http://cryptomeorg.siteprotect.net/

Thank you for your comments. I also totally agree that as a technical achievement, Avatar makes its mark just like Jurassic Park or Matrix did when it first came out. Also, I agree that financially it did very well as only James Cameron could do in producing the film. In fact, I will certainly add Avatar to my collection of DVD's (of which I have over a thousand titles now so I'm certainly contributing to the MPAA as well.) The only reason I brought it up was to point out that the media industries have THAT much money to commit to a single film which ultimately had a return investment that was as great as expected. 10 years ago, it would have been unheard of for any movie investors to put that much money on a single title. In order for them to be able to put that kind of money into it means that their method of generating revenue through multiple streams is already a success for them.

As a side note, when a DVD stops making money it no longer gets produced (Out of Print). Yet sales for $4.99 DVD's (usually on older titles) means that movie companies can still make a profit on them at that price. Apple's model for their Itunes store is straightforward and simple. Every song gets a flat rate. If it does well, it makes a lot of money in sales. If people don't like it as much, they sell for less and the artist gets less money. Straightforward profit-gain ratio. Setting up adjusted prices so that popular stuff sells for more, and crappy stuff sells for less is designed only to eek more money out of a consumer base. There's no additional value being added or subtracted beyond what the music industry thinks people are willing to pay.

But that's because it was designed that way (to be complicated). There is no reason for content that has very little manufacture cost (can we say 1.5 cents per DVD in bulk?) to cost as much as it does. There are already tariffs for blank DVD's and CD-R's in many countries (see Canada, Italy and Spain) even if it is never used for anything but data duplication.

Money is already being generated through Ad-streams and revenue both on the DVD's and on the air and even on cable and paid subscription shows. We seem to necessitate that the movie industries should make profit from tarriffs on storage mediums as well as advertisements and sales of the DVD's. Yet even with multiple revenue streams, spending $15 on a DVD isn't enough? Even when the media industries have been so successful over the years that they make that they can afford to spend $500 million to have James Cameron make Avatar?

But that's true of just about any field. When's the last time you cared whether or not a blanket used a cross-stitch, chain-stitch or overlock?

Or whether the food you buy is flash pasteurized, irradiated or high pressure pasteurized?

Does it really matter? Maybe, maybe not. But every field has its own jargon and technobabble. People need to make the effort themselves to learn enough to make a qualified decision but the truth is a lot of times we just don't. It's easier to blame the sales person or the tech expert (in any field.) It's harder to blame ourselves for not making the effort.