It doesn't affect me, but online sheet music theft might affect a few of my friends. Have a look at this website and decide for yourself.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/962/812/993/stop-online-sheet-music-theft/

I'm not too sure that any kind of a petition would do any good really...

There needs to be legal action. A joined action from all the copyright holders of the works shared! Nothing else!

as a computer programmer, anything electronic will be pirated and there's nothing you can do. you can put copy protection on it - doesn't matter - if pirates want it, there are ways to crack it and they WILL be used.

The only thing you can do is appeal to the people who want to do things legally.

And hope that the juvenile delinquent pirates grow up into moral adults who will eventually pay for what they originally stole.

We need to at least make a stand and say it's not OK.

Of course the problem is much more rampant in popular music. It's even worse when people take pirated music and play it in public.

There's an issue here though...

The following are preliminary questions that need a yes/no type of reply:

1. Is pianofiles.com illegal?
2. Is file sharing of copyrighted files illegal?

My replies are as follows:

1. Actually I'm not sure. I think that it IS illegal, in the same way that pirate bay is illegal, etc. Yet it's difficult to make a valid legal point towards that. Still what's going on inside pianofiles.com is definitely illegal.
2. YES, by all means.

So here's the very important question:

Why the heck do we need a petition and 1000 signatures in order for anything to happen to battle crime?!?! We have women/children abuse hotlines, we get cops going around in patrols to prevent crime, or interven as fast as possible. we get laws that allow the government to lock up people in suspicion of terrorism! We get traffic cops fining even for the easiest of crimes (bypassing a stop sign), and we get traffic wardens who provide further tickets for illegal parking!

Yet, in this case not only we have something that's totally illegal, but there's nothing we (as people, as bystanders, as creators, as those whose work of intellectual is being violated) can do, but to ask for another 999 people to join our cause in case our plea for justice can be heard!

Nobody else finds that this is weird?

Cause there's two cases in this:

1. The law enforcement agencies DO something about it. Otherwise a law that can't be enforced doesn't exist. (Education is the key here, btw).
2. If the law cannot be enforced then change the law about copyrights!

But allowing for this to happen means that there's serious trouble in all accounts: Society, law enforcers, creators, musicians, and everyone involved really!