The issue of copyright has never been the threats heaped on by governments, it has been the cost of enforcing those threats. It doesn't matter if they give the death penalty to convicted pirates; the risk/reward equation of piracy is still a vastly greater incentive. Every year they'd execute one or two pirates with the resources they have available to them while 500 million go on torrenting with impunity - and as their threats go up the incentive to learn and adopt safer piracy practices will also go up.

The whole concept that increased penalty decreases incentive is flawed, especially in scenarios like this where enforcement is almost impossible. The ability to pirate completely anonymously and securely is an already-complete solution awaiting its problem; please, give the public the excuse to learn to use strong crypto and onion routing to strengthen the network. We're waiting with bells on.