CNET News asks a good question: in light of the fact that Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko, had a glimmering debut weekend despite its illegal availability on the net beforehand, could this sort of thing actually help Hollywood, rather than hurt it?

One copyright lawyer in the story "seethed" at the thought, claiming that any positive effect the piracy had is instantly negated since they're spreading the actual movies, and not just word of mouth. Other analysts disagreed, saying that if Moore's film has been harmed by file sharing, the damage is hard to see.

"File sharing has been going on for years now and yet the movie industry continues to see record profits and revenues," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for Internet users, in the article. "Clearly file sharing is not killing the movie industry, far from it."

We continue to think that "protecting" files with DRM is a waste of time, and prevents people from watching or listening to content on their mobile phones or portable media players. To us, this is just another example. No amount of DRM would have prevented Sicko from hitting the Internet -- so why keep torturing honest people who pay for movie, television, and music downloads?

Hollywood hates pirates, but can it use them? [CNET News]