Ive just finished reading through this thread and so will now give my opinion.
Firstly I can't stand the state of things at the moment with exposure and the lack of respect many seem to have towards our art, I would love to put a stop to it once and for all... but at the same time I don't let it effect me too much as I don't want to waste any of my time thinking about them.
There is exposure etc in so many places that putting a stop to it would be extremely difficult and to make it harder they are not actually doing anything illegal, unethical yes, disrespectful yes, damaging to our art yes, but not illegal.
To stop youtube is one thing... but what about putfile, google video and all the other video hosting sites??
And on top of them we have all the p2p file sharing programs to contend with.
I don't think we should want a stop to online magic retailers as without them I would not be how I am today. I also wouldn't want a stop to pdf and video downloads as I enjoy being able to recieve an item instantly and getting stuck straight in.
One idea would be to up the price on all magical related purchases... this would stop people being so willing to freely share the material and stop people without a true interest in purchasing the items.
Of course this would then be unfair to us as we know that some items really aren't worth a lot, I mean could you imagine paying 60-70 quid for 'Hole in the Head'... Oh there'd be a hole in my head alright... straight after I squeeze the trigger.
There could be a system implemented where to be accepted for full access to forums you have to have posted a certain amount of informative and genuine posts. They could have a really high limit so that the people who aren't really interested will not stay around and take the time and effort to gain access to such a place.
But then with this there is the question of what would happen to all of us... I mean to be fair to everyone we'd all have to start again (well except for the highly regarded performers)... I wouldn't be exactly thrilled about that.
Another thing could be to remove all listings of magic forums and shops from search engines such as google etc... then that'd make it so magical related things can't be searched for.
This would be good but again there is a downside, since we can't find the places by searching we may never get to experience or have the oportunity to perform certain things.
Questions to gain access is kinda pointless as it's easy enough to just google whatever they ask.
One thing I have noticed is that it does appear to be those of a younger age who see these things on youtube, ive never had an adult ever say they saw how something was done on youtube after/during performance.
I really do wish there was a way to stop this, but maybe at this time stopping it completely is a bit beyond our reach. We should definitely work towards it though, and maybe together, little by little, we can one day put an end to it once and for all.
Thanks.
