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IFPI Domain Dispute Likely to Go To Court
fgaliegue writes "Ars Technica has a follow-up on the ifpi.com domain takeover by The Pirate Bay. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, ifpi.org, is quite unhappy that the .com is now a link to the (still not live) International Federation of Pirates Interests. The ifpi.com domain has been free as soon as March of this year, according to WebArchive. Nevertheless, the "real" IFPI wants to take it to the WIPO under the accusation of cybersquatting."
They're putting it to good use, right? Besides, claims of squatting would sound rather strange considering ifpi.com had lapsed in March already, and they're only twitching now that it's become a mite embarrassing.
Still, one shouldn't underestimate the potential for corruption in organizations like the WIPO. Especially since they have their hands in the large and varied jar of "intellectual property".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
First, the premise behind Cybersquatting is to obtain money or some other form of compensation. The Pirate Bay has no intention and no desire to obtain any compensation from them. While the site being made may be satirical or "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah" in focus... it's still not cybersquatting.
Looks like someone forgot to pay for the domain, the name lapsed and somebody picked it up then gave it to Pirate Bay. And unless the law changes... Pirate Bay wins.
I don't understand why International Facilities and Property Information Ltd. would be suing The Pirate Bay.
"International Federation of Pirates Interests should not be confused with {The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry}[ifpi.org]."
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
Despite the looks of the headlines hre, TPB IS using the site. Heck, they've got more content on their page than I do on mine. It's not a lot more than a "comig soon..." page but we see that all the time for businesses that are just getting their cyberpresense off the ground. I suppose every reasonable person already has concluded that the IFPI (org) doesn't have a leg to stand on but I am enjoying the opportunity to laugh at (A) the org's ineptitude of allowing this to happen in the first place, and (B) for an organization that so enjoys perverting the law to their benefit finding themselves clearly positioned on the other end of the gun.
If TPB requested a legal fund to defend themselves on this issue, I'd be tossing them some coin right now. Give 'em hell.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I applaud Pirate Bay their sense of irony and their sense of humor!
Now if we could just get a photograph of Mickey Mouse smoking a dube.
Ed
This question has some answer but the main reason behind it is to make you think.
I actually read it like that almost every time I see IFPI spelled out. That's probably why few people use the term "phonographic" anymore.
I dont see how that qualifies as "cyber squatting".
If it was the default hosting page, perhaps.. But even then so what? They got it legally. If you wanted it instead and missed out, thats your tough luck.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The original owners let it lapse. I dont see who that qualifies as 'taking it over'. It was a simple legal business transaction.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
taking over and using IFPI like this is a pretty low-life kind of thing to do.
No one has "taken over" the site. It was for sale. Someone bought it, and gave it to the Pirate Bay. If they want the site so badly, perhaps they can offer to BUY IT from Pirate Bay, no?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I do not think this would be a good idea (for TPB), since it would strengthen the argument that TPB just wanted to rip off the (old) IPFI.
Axe me while I slumber
Well, I disagree. An outfit whose sole purpose is to protect intellectual property interests should have been more competent in the IT department, and protected their own domain a little better. They screwed up. Let them take their lumps, just like anyone else that forgets to fork over a few bucks to their registrar.
... keep in mind that they have just as much of an agenda as the IFPI and their ilk. Raising awareness of these rather important issues is one of the things that The Pirate Bay likes to do, and this is one hell of a way to do it.
So, if you're trying to imply that The Pirate Bay hacked into their site and took it over that's just wrong. They got hold of a lapsed domain name and apparently they're using it. The fact that they torqued off the IFPI (not a pleasant bunch to begin with) is just too bad. Furthermore, it's exactly the sort of thing that The Pirate Bay would do
Besides, I think it's hysterical. And I wouldn't be too sure of the WIPO business either.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Is it just me or does this post turn up on every IFPI story?
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Ironically, I will now remember ifpi.com easily, and never would have remembered anything to with pirate bay before. For me, this puts the link in my brain to reflect FSMs association of global warming with lack of pirates.
Now if they loose it, I will probably remember this article and be able to find the article and from there find the site, but isn't that sort of what good domain names are designed to help simplify?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Right. I lost the link to this huge list of RIAA/IFPI-backed artists who lost their entire income due to piracy and are now forced to live in two-room apartments downtown. You surely got it somewhere, right?
How many creative careers do you think start with people experimenting with stuff they could not afford or be otherwise unable to get thanks to piracy?
Piracy might hurt creativity in some ways but also helps it in others. Bad material is more likely to get substantial/critical damage from it.
The Pirate Bay and others like it are fighting a battle where the clashing ideologies are essentially based on who has a right to make how much money. The *AA believe they have the right to profit the most from music and have the system of law to back them up. The opposing group believes that this system of law squelches art and freedom and may well eventually destroy the ability of the artist to have music, movies or other art distributed in a fair manner to the masses.
Since there is a body of law in question, the issue is not so simple as just two groups arguing, the one without the legal backing must by definition break the laws in order to do what they feel is ethically right. It is immoral and unethical to follow a bad law, and they believe the laws concerning copyright are bad ones.
Radiohead and allofmp3.com make convincing arguments that the current system does in fact depress creative and free expression. The issue doesn't affect me directly since I don't purchase and don't download and rarely listen to music and don't watch movies other than the ones on broadcast TV. Still, I watch closely since flouted laws tend to get changed after a lot of squabbling, and maybe someday there will be sufficient art out there that some of it will appeal to me.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
the 'pirates' would have gotten .org and the phonographic guys would have gotten the .com domain.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Relevant quote:
Pirate Bay should just say IFPI stands for the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry
No cybersquatting here! ;-)
Seriously though, why should anyone be allowed to run to court and file charges of cybersquatting after letting their domain lapse renewal for so many months? There should be a 60-day statute of limitations on these. No one should own an inherent RIGHT to their domain name after letting it lapse. Otherwise you're opening the door for companies and organizations to come back years after the fact and say, "Thank you, I'll take my domain back now."
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I read the summary too fast. I thought IFPI.ORG was pointed to a pornographic site...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I also find civil disobedience highly selfish, because you're refusing to play by society's rules to your benefit and often to the detriment of others. Civil disobedience may seem like a righteous cause, but it's rather infuriating to be on the other side of. For example, I once expressed my opinions on driving on Slashdot, about how I drive on or below the speed limit (on it if people want me to go fast), and how I don't mind which lane I'm in when I do it. IIRC, I received two death threats, and a few people trying to convince me that not only is it immoral, but somehow illegal. My example wasn't civil disobedience so much as civil obedience, and Slashdotters did not like it.Not as far as I can tell. They just seem to be running a music business independent of the RIAA. They don't seem to be making any arguments, let alone convincing ones. The business who's making the arguments is the PirateBay, who constantly claims it's for free expression, which just gets on my nerves. They champion extremist libertarianism, where despite all the evidence and reasoning in favour of copyrights, they maintain will somehow be good for art. They come off sounding as extreme as Sony does when its representatives claim that ripping a CD is stealing. I'm all for them arguing, but they are going ahead and undermining copyrights, and they've managed to do so from a legally defensible position. They know what they're helping to do, they know what most of their users are doing, and that it's illegal in most countries (including their own), but they also know that they're legal. I think it's a tragedy.
[Mods: I've had too many of my posts modded down today by people who don't like discussions to contain opposing viewpoints. Please just leave me alone if you don't agree. Thanks in advance]
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The big joke in America is the idea that any peon here has a say in the system. The deep pockets of the varies lobbies run the show, and Americans pretend to make a difference every 2 years or so by going to the voting booth and declaring which team they want to win.
If America was a true democracy, you'd have a real shot at changing things. Just get everyone who wants copyright reform to vote for copyright reform. In this democratic republic, though. that's just not the way it works.
Well, 47 comments, and nobody is quoting from the article because there is no link to it - just to ars' front page.
For the linky-impaired: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071018-battle-brewing-between-pirate-bay-recording-industry-over-ifpi-domain-coup.html
Just in case anyone wants to go against tradition and actually RTFA.
I wanted to add that your views on civil disobedience, particularly the selfish nature of them, are skewed. Most people who cry "civil disobedience!" aren't enacting true civil disobedience. It's not just about breaking the law that you feel is unjust. It's about dealing with the consequences, and using the attention you get from those consequences to fuel your cause and get people on your side.
If I pirate a movie, that's not civil disobedience. If I pirate a movie, get caught, refuse to pay the fine, go to court, refuse to pay out THERE, and get thrown in jail, that's civil disobedience. Folding the second you're offered a settlement so that you can get on with your life is just getting caught and trying to get out of trouble.
True civil disobedience is a huge gambit. You're risking your future and your freedom for a cause you believe in. I daresay that no one who promotes copyright-infringement disobedience really cares that much about copyright reform--they just use that to justify their actions. They champion extremist libertarianism, where despite all the evidence and reasoning in favour of copyrights, they maintain will somehow be good for art. They come off sounding as extreme as Sony does when its representatives claim that ripping a CD is stealing. There isn't a lot of evidence and reasoning in favour of copyrights now. We live in a very prosperous age where few people have to work 16 hours/day in order to survive. In an age like this, where there is a lot of leisure time, art can flourish without the protection that copyright offers. We also have easy access to tools which can be used to make high-quality art and an unlimited distribution mechanism, both of which used to be very hard to do. Without this, copyright makes sense, because it's really quite hard to make and promote your product. But with computers and the Internet, anyone with an idea can basically create their work and promote it. Remember, promotion of the arts is the reason for copyright, not so that one can earn money off of their creativity. Being able to earn money was the original way that the arts were expected to be promoted, since writing a book or creating a painting would take a long time, and people just couldn't afford to create while working in the fields all day. Times have changed, but instead of copyright laws lessening (which they should given the times in which we are living), copyright is becoming more strict. It is wrong, based upon the entire basis for copyright.
My understanding of "squatting" is, "Squatting is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied [name]space or ... [domain] that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use."
And "cybersquatting" is, "The act of registering a domain name in bad faith, with the sole intent to sell that domain name to its rightful owner."
So, if Pirate Bay buys a domain that was unoccupied, and they plan to use it, then they DO NOT fall into either category...
Maybe someone should point this out before it goes to court...
--E--
I very much doubt the World Internet Piracy Organization will give them the ruling they're hoping for.
Sancho: You have some valid points. It isn't that democracy itself is bad, but rather that the people who have the most control of the government, and the laws created by the government, are not for the most part in the control of the people supposedly represented. If you educate 10,000 people about the issue, then get their opinions, I'd be shocked to hear that most of them think the current system of content distribution is fair. If the will of the people, as determined by an educated majority were to actually be followed by the legislative branch and enforced, then The Pirate Bay would have to change their name.
It is by this definition that I call the the body of law bad from TPB's perspective. I'm don't think I have the education to make that call myself. The problem with law and government is that there isn't really much of a good way to do it. I can certainly see problems with our form of government (I do live in the US) but I've really not been able to determine how to fix it. Personally, I'm not willing to pay the penalties so I'm not willing to break the law to make a point. I'm also not willing to give my own money to those I believe are abusing their position, so I do without. I can live with that. I simply don't desire the content at the lower price and higher risk enough to break the law. I'm not making much of a difference, but it is a small one and isn't motivated by selfishness. I choose in this instance first to vote with my wallet. Second though, I'll vote with a ballot, as much as I can given other matters of conscience. I have been fairly consistent in voting for a primary of the two parties here, but if one came out and espoused a desire to see the system changed, providing they weren't otherwise too horribly objectionable, I'd vote for that party. No parties have come out with that position though, because they cannot, they either alienate their financial supporters or they alienate the voters. It's lose/lose for them, so I'm not holding my breath that my ballot will affect this issue any time soon.
TheVelvetFlamebait: That segues nicely into the question of whether allowing people to use your service to break the law in their own country is immoral. If you believe your laws are moral and the laws of another country are immoral, then how is it wrong to assist people in other countries if they choose to break their own laws? I think this is what TPB is actually doing. The real problem is that a huge number of the citizens of the US are willing to break the laws. If they weren't, then there would be no profit for TPB. If you're ticked off because it affects you negatively, well, that's where you get the opportunity to get your country's laws changed to stop allowing TPB to be able to do business with the US. If there is no jurisdiction to directly affect them, then censorship (blocking their IPs) would be sufficient alternative. I think China has done a good bit of research on how to control their citizens' Internet use, so it's not even uncharted territory.
Of course the obvious rebuttal to that is to more rigidly enforce the existing laws, track down the criminals and make them pay. If a significant enough portion of the population of any governed people starts breaking a law though, it is probably time to reconsider that law. Until I thought this through for this very post, I was still a fence sitter, but now I believe the laws are immoral and need to be changed and I do not believe it will happen in the reasonable future due to the reasons that Sancho clearly defined. Essentially I've decided that this is not an issue that is caused by some people doing something they know is wrong, but by a huge number of people who are willing to take significant risks (and I don't know how stupid you'd have to be to not realize that pirating content is a significant risk) because they feel the system is wrong. I don't know if your average pirate would be able to express it clearly without prompting, but starting asking those who do download, "Do you pirate the music because the record c
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I think IFPI has a good chance of winning this court battle.
Adapt, adopt, or get out of the way!
However, if you were in a democracy, you take more responsibility with your freedoms. It's not enough to give up on the whole thing and take matters into your own hands. Citizens of democracy aren't just handed two parties to vote between, and that's their choice. They have options, like vocally rallying people against certain problems in society. The pirate bay could do that instead of facilitating piracy on a mass scale, and I, for one, would treat it with a lot more respect. But it doesn't have to be an organisation; anyone can run, or campaign to make certain things election issues. That's the way "having a voice" changes laws: politicians will listen if you're loud enough.I'm also not a big fan of this "stupid American" factor either. Most Americans have different opinions on what's considered important, and the politicians (being as talented as they are) pick up on that. I'm not optimistic that copyright will ever be an election issue with the masses, but if people group up and try hard enough, they could get a politician to concentrate on the matter for some free votes. Or maybe it would reveal that lots of people support copyrights as they are now, and that would be the end of that.So say if there was some big industry lobby who wanted something that everyone else in the country specifically didn't want enough to make a hot-button issue, you're saying that the industry lackeys would still manage to get into power? Amazing.
Basically, I think that most of this lobbyists in power stuff is just what people in democracies with marginalised views tell themselves in explanation why no-one cares about what they care about.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
BTW, copyrights also serve the important function of allowing an artist to keep his art's integrity. Some people might be turned off distributing their music if they see cheap bastardisations of their original recording, or seeing their work being attributed constantly to other people.We equate the two because we recognise that the most reliable way to make something flourish is to pour money into it. In this capitalist society, we don't have too much of a choice. We could stop copyrights, but that doesn't exactly help science and the useful arts. I think instead, we need to firstly stop pirating (so society can pay off this ever-growing debt to the big labels), then we need to concentrate on limiting the big labels so their recent spread of power is both stopped and reversed. Keep copyrights and just improve them. Piracy (or the facilitation thereof) is not the solution.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ultimately, I'm basically ok with copyright, just not with the length or power of them. I should be able to make copies for personal use. Copyright should expire within about 20 years. I'm not sure that they should be transferrable. The basically unlimited copyright that we have right now is simply not acceptable (and it's really another justification for civil disobedience-style infringement--the cartels lobby for longer and longer copyrights, eventually obtaining virtually unlimited copyrights, and destroying the basis for the entire copyright system--if they're going to treat it like their own personal plaything, maybe there's something to be said for treating their works like our own personal playthings.) Piracy (or the facilitation thereof) is not the solution. You're right, of course. Like most issues, it's fighting extremism with extremism. The truth is, I'm not sure what is worse, though. Ideas and the expressions thereof are meant to be free--copyright is supposed to be an exception to this, and it is supposed to be limited. The cartels have mutated this into the concept of intellectual property. They own it now, and basically forever. But in the end, the art is supposed to belong to the people, and with new works, this will basically never be. So who is the real pirate? The person stealing the content now, or the people stealing the content from the people for all eternity?
"We have not done anything illegal or even immoral," Sunde told Ars. "I can't see why we shouldn't be able to keep the domain name. We're not going to bash IFPI on it, we're going to host our own IFPI on it," he said.
Given that UN WIPO clearly are a bunch of crooks that made the corrupt UDRP rules so that their customers can overreach trademarks - even though there is absolutely no infringement against them - then the Phonographic Industry have the odds stacked in their favour.
There is no other occassion wereby you can have legal proceeding taken against you - when have committed no wrong-doing or tort against the complainant.
Don't be a fooled by the propaganda; this is no 'boundary dispute' - the ifpi.com domain can be used for anything that does not infringe upon the Phonographic Industry - even to start your own business - or by the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute.
This is why I set up my criticism site WIPO - nothing to do with those low-lifes at UN WIPO.
However, if you don't like that, the really great thing about copyright is that it's possible for artists to release their work as if there were no copyright.We certainly don't want unlimited copyright, but it's kinda hard to do legitimate civil disobedience because right now, you're very unlikely to get caught and face the consequences. It just becomes the selfish act that I talked about before.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
That said, I also know that there's a huge market for non-popular music. I'm no music geek, but I do have a few off-the-radar favorites like Feist (now getting more attention due to recent Apple iPod commercials), Flogging Molly, Nerf Herder, and The Refreshments (who did get a little radio play 10 years ago, but not nearly as much as they deserved.) When I let other people listen to these CDs, they tend to really enjoy the music and rush out to buy their own copies. These artists, though, don't get a lot of notice outside of the small circles of people who know about them, but almost every song on each of their CDs is really quite good, unlike the pop idols that have one or two good songs per CD, with the rest being filler. Of course, all of that is my opinion, but in discussions with other music lovers, we often have a consensus.
So I guess the point of the rambling is this: does copyright, which lends itself to big conglomerations recycling music in order to generate revenue significantly promote the arts? Is a greater body of work in the public domain more or less important than the revenue stream that the labels get?
Since most new works will effectively never fall into the public domain anymore, we have to look at illicit works that derive from currently-copyrighted material. The best example I can think of is The Grey Album. It's fantastic, it draws from the Beatles and Jay-Z, and it's definitely not just a rehash of other music, despite the fact that it uses almost nothing but other artists' work. We certainly don't want unlimited copyright, but it's kinda hard to do legitimate civil disobedience because right now, you're very unlikely to get caught and face the consequences. It just becomes the selfish act that I talked about before. The Pirate Bay, in facilitating illegal behavior (even if they aren't doing anything illegal themselves), are drawing attention to the issue. I wish they'd talk more about why copyright is out of hand right now, but they do occasionally talk about the issues of copyright, pros and cons (well, mostly cons), etc. Because of the nature of the press and the fact that individual copyright infringement cases don't tend to get a lot of notice, sites like TPB may be the best shot at bringing attention to the issue.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Just for the record, having let several domains go in the past couple years. I have some experience in this. The registrars sent me a variety of emails and even one left a message on my cell. to inform me I had less than "insert" number of days left till the domain expired. It's not like they didn't have enough notification. They let it expire, it's their loss. Also as noted above several times, the domain is being put to use and not for sale. Protect your Pirate Rights | http://www.ifpi.com/
So, if you're trying to imply that The Pirate Bay hacked into their site and took it over that's just wrong.
I am not trying to imply any such thing. People can 'take over' something by many different mechanisms. Purchase, gift, inheritance, invasion, whatever. All it means is they now have ownership. You are trying to read something into my message that is not there.
Personally I think it is a very childish and immature action. It is not going to forward their cause and it will result in some adverse publicity.
Here are the WIPO guidelines:
What factors guide the panelists' decisions?
The panel decides the case on the base of the criteria, which are cumulative, contained in the UDRP Policy, which also contains practical examples of how a party may prove its compliance with these criteria:
i) whether the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights;
ii) whether the respondent has any rights or legitimate interests in the domain name (for example, the legitimate offering of goods and services under the same name);
iii) whether the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith.
Looks to me like Pirate Bay loses on all three counts.
Childish it may be, but then again, you have to look at the history of The Pirate Bay. And it will definitely further their agenda: I just don't think that agenda is what you think it is, that's all. Besides, the activities of the media companies (and groups like the RIAA and the IFPI) are also childish and immature .. only more so. Those people would snatch up www.piratebay.org in a heartbeat, if only they could ... but the Pirate Bay's operators are a little too competent for that.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Maybe not many for the music industry but I had a broader scope in mind... like computer science and engineering. How many of today's top senior programmers and engineers used pirate copies of expensive software during college/university years? This figure is very likely closer to 100% than 0%.
Careers in music have always been high-risk and mostly non-profitable and that's why so much of it starts as a hobby and ends as a hobby. Most of the small bands are desperate for exposure but broadcasting contracts make it nearly impossible for them to get any airplay unless they agree to be raped by labels and studios. Some have started to wise-up and realized they can get inexpensive no-strings-attached exposure by posting their stuff for free on internet exchanges to generate publicity and gain brand recognition for themselves. Sometimes they manage to make money off their trouble, sometimes they do not. Internet publishing does net them a broader audience and bypasses the labels, studios and broadcast licenses that do everything in their power to block independents and rob them of any revenues.
Between piracy and labels, I think labels cause the most harm and mislead artists into blaming everything on piracy.
I never buy music I never heard before. In a 0-music-piracy/free-download world, I could quite possibly end up not buying any music ever again... that would hurt music sales even worse, no?
Labels:
+ Help more artists into the scene
+ Fights destructive piracy, not just for them, but for all copyright holders
- Some of their lawsuits are poorly researched, resulting in the very real possibility that the plaintiffs are innocent
- Fail to tell the complete truth about piracy
Piracy:
+ Helps culture in the short term
- Kills culture slowly in the long term
- Encourages the growth of itself (people thinking: "If he gets to do it, why can't I?")
- Represented by groups such as the Pirate Bay, who vocally fail to tell the complete truth about the labels
Labels win for me hands down.No. I know several people who pirate all or nearly all their music, some with gigs of it. And they could afford to spend money on music (perhaps not the amount they've procured, but enough). And if people continue to spread the idea that piracy isn't so bad, or a better alternative to the labels, then we are only going to see more of these people.
As for your problem of music discovery, that's no problem for most people. If your tastes are "mainstream" enough, you can rely on the radio, or internet radio. You can use services like last.fm to see what people with similar tastes are listening to. You can walk into an average CD store and listen to a CD off the shelf. iTunes will give you 30 second previews of a huge variety of signed and indie artists, arranged in genres. There are plenty of ways to try before you buy, all of which %100 legal. If you need to rely on piracy you aren't really trying.
However, if you are one of the few altruistic beings on the Earth and you therefore only pirate to try the music (and you delete the music immediately after trying it, and you don't use a P2P client so as not to help propagate the pirated copy, and you aren't advertising the fact so as not to spread the fallacy that it's OK to pirate), then I accept you aren't doing anything wrong.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
If Microsoft managed a total anti-piracy Windows/Office lock-down, most people would refuse to pay $300 for Windows and $500 for Office and Microsoft's monopoly could face serious erosion - people tend to take their home computing habits to work so workplaces would start switching to dekstop Linux (or other) some time later. Both items are priced seriously beyond reason regardless of the piracy situation. I personally view pirating business/development tools for private use as free publicity and training: if you want to sell to businesses, mindhsare is one of your most valuable assets and one of the key reasons behind Microsoft's continued success... and much of this software is much too expensive for people to buy for self-training or personal projects unless you happen to be particularly wealthy.
My music discovery process: I simply download what I happen to come across when I feel curious. I rarely hunt down any specific genre, song, group or whatever. I do not crave music and I rarely bother hunting down even songs I like in any form... so, queuing up in music stores or browsing through Apple's catalog is not something I could be bothered with. When I download stuff, it is mostly only because I can and felt like it - there is not much of an a-priori intention behind it.
A good example of a person who hasn't done well out of piracy is Martin Korth, and his Gameboy Advance emulator and debugger, NO$GBA. It's a fantastic bit of software, written entirely in x86 assembly. It comes in a Windows and DOS version, and the DOS version runs on his 66Mhz processor. He says it's the result of 9 years (full time) of programming and tweaking. The kick in the tail is he charges up to US$1750 for a single commercial license! He harbours a bitter resentment towards people who pirate his software because, despite his exorbitant prices, he doesn't get many sales (he relies on the occasional high-profile one), and he definitely isn't rich. I seriously doubt he made any decent sales as a result of this "free publicity".It sounds convenient. The only problem is that it's illegal and immoral (for reasons I've explained). I think last.fm wouldn't be much more of a hassle. Instead of opening your P2P client, how about opening this page? Check out the top videos, tracks, and artists, and perhaps check out some free downloads. And if you get an AudioScrobbler, and create a last.fm account, you can get targeted new music suggestions. You can even listen to 30 second samples (I know, not long, but decent quality) for certain tracks. Sure you don't get the whole song handed to you on a plate, but you at least find new possibilities faster.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
As I wrote previously, many development tools are much too expensive to justify buying only for hobby/self-training purposes. The market for commercial development of homebrew games using NO$GBA (how many hobbyists could afford to pay $1750 for it?) is tiny... serious development houses will simply buy the official development platform from Nintendo months before the platform's launch instead of waiting 10 years for a third party's homebrew debugger. People who only want to play emulated ROMs can stick with one of the many free emulators and skip the $1750 debugger.
The market for NO$GBA (people who need GBA debugging) is very small regardless of the price... this product is several years late on its "Best Before" date as a serious development tool.
If you look at engineering and other specialties, each software house has a near-monopoly on some parts of the tool chain... in general, there rarely are more than three well-known providers for any one particular link and each link often costs (tens/hundreds of) thousands CDN$. The market for these tools is somewhat small but they are necessary for engineers to carry on with their day-to-day business of building the next CPU, HD-DVD appliance, etc. These cost way too much to be purchased for personal use and the physical processes involved in putting their output to actual use is often equally prohibitive.
On the software side, most platforms now have free development tools... instead of pirating Turbo/Boarland C like ~15 years ago, new would-be developers can now download Visual Studio Express straight off Microsoft's official site. Offering free downloads of VSE to string up new developers is M$' way of binding new talent to Windows and Visual Studio - an indirect acknowledgment that Linux and FOSS free development tools threaten its monopoly.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.