Merchandising and at the door sales are only good if you are a larger artist, otherwise it is a struggle. iTunes gives a break-out artist the ability to make money, and Bit Torrent takes that away from them. Simple maths.

Piracy is not black and white, certainly not. Many artists benefit from it as well as lose out to it. But until you lose, you only see the benefits of it. Free software, free plugins, etc. Sharing and the flow of free information is vital. Yes agree the music companies don't provide as easy a service to download music as Google, and if people get it free AND conveniently they'd have to be pretty stupid to want to struggle to seek out a paid download instead.

But people need to get used to the idea of paying, however little, for what they consume. It is basic ethics. By not paying they gain something but the artist gains nothing. If someone offers their labour in whatever form - be it a film, song, album, photo, book, or whatever - and someone takes it, benefits from it, but doesn't pay - that is unethical. A lot of people who listen to music couldn't give a fuck about the artist, they don't even like the music that much, they got it for free... so there it is... background music for nothing. That is not the kind of exposure I'd enjoy as an artist.

According to the indictment that I just read, one of the ways the government is trying to diminish their safe harbor protection is by claiming that when they received notification for a take-down, they only took down the specified link and not any other links which might point to the same file (or collection of files, as I'm guessing they have their files distributed over many servers). The problem with that claim is that one person might be infringing the copyright of a file uploaded, but another person might have a license that allows them to upload it for their own personal archive, or they might have a fair-use claim.

On the other hand, they claim that the operators of the site were uploading infringing material themselves and advertising this material to others, and they don't seem to be claiming that there are even many infringements that could be proven. A few weeks ago the US also moved to extradite a kid in the UK who ran the website 'TVShack,' also on copyright infringement. I don't think there's a historical precedent for this, but it's certainly a new tactic that this US administration is using and that we might see a lot more of.

@disneytoy "So could Panasonic have the FBI shut down this site (in the future) under the premise, we are not authorized to alter their firmware."

Is that a question or are you being rhetorical? When it reaches that point, then we have a problem. Most everyone on this thread is basing their opinion off the assumption that the government is pervasively acting against the 'common good' and enacting this law to allow its fascist fingers further reach into your business. It looks, in reality, that for the last 4 or 5 years that these shutdowns have been going on, they've (the feds) been targeting sites that openly share copyright material like tvshack and megaupload. Most creative copyright infringement cases come from the creator or whatever they are like the studio who owns the creators ass, and these are a lot more personal than the mass violations that kim dotcom and fam were arrested for enabling. We on PV in danger of this? well it'll be easy to find who's responsible with the badges and all :p

@eoshd "It is basic ethics."

correct. I will repeat, with all this premium entertainment and software available for free, there is very little market for open-source software, or for alternative entertainment to what is produced with mega-studio backing. Megabox wasn't the solution for this like @spirit hypothesized, because you could already find most albums for free on fucking mega-upload. It would just be another big business in the vein of itunes but crass and cheap and self-defeated.

But how many of the people that purchased his music first downloaded it? From everything I've seen, many people download first and then buy after if they like it, or they'll buy the next album. Self-distribution is a very difficult and often becomes a full time job and leaves you without any time to make music, which is usually why people become musicians in the first place, to make music and to have people listen to it. Downloading, self-releasing, pay-what-you-want, a donation button, these are all things that allow independent musicians to thrive like they never have before, because of pitchfork.com and other sites, friends of mine have been able to release their music, have it downloaded and listened to, and then they see a tremendous amount of sales and touring requests, enough that they don't even have to consider signing to a major, they can continue to be independent and release music on their own schedule and to their own taste.

Can some agency outside the USA, go to USA to arrest someone? I like many things of the USA, but does not involve the main policies towards foreign countries and tell everyone what is right and what is wrong.

Update. This time it is serious.

• Megaupload – Closed
• Fileserve – Stopped filesharing. You can only download your own files. Deleting multiple files. Banning Premium accounts. Closed Affiliate Program.
• Filesonic – Stopped filesharing. You can only download your own files. Closed Affiliate Program. Changed server location Jan 22, 2012. Taken down it's Facebook page Now using Digital fingerprinting. Files are being deleted as soon as uploaded (as Hotfile did).
• VideoBB – Closed Affiliate Program.
• Filepost – Started suspending accounts with infringing material (as Hotfile did)
• Uploaded.t... – Blocked U.S. access.
• Videozer – Closed Affiliate Program.
• Filejungle – Owned by Fileserve (same as above). Testing USA IP addresses blocking.
• Uploadstation – Owned by Fileserve (same as above). Testing USA IP addresses blocking.
• 4Shared – Deleting multiple files
• EnterUpload - Down (Redirect)

My understanding is that this cloud sites will be used to dig huge amount of gold our of usual users.

They just wait their time. They calculate hash for each file. And they'll use simple approach so any file that had been marked "pirate" will be instantle mapped to all users who have it and they'll get mail with demand for payment.

@EOSHD but PirateBay "technically" is a free service that doesn't PAY it's uploaders based on how often people download their files.

Megaupload and others are directly profiting from bootlegging AND paying people to bootleg. It sucks that they're closing down, but if 10% of the files on those sites are legal, I'd be shocked and stunned. That's why the rest are all shutting down now...they know the real numbers.