Dead Men Walking

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

They'd have never have got it off the ground without being able to piggy-back on Sadako's 1 trillion gigabit connection.  Honest.  :whistle:

Lmao :)

I don't understand where that damages figure comes from!
 
Surely without some form of research into how many downloads could really be considered lost sales then £2.1m is a number pulled out of thin air?

'P2P is a demand signal from the market' - Cory Doctorow.

These guys dont get it, do they. P2P is how people want to obtain their music/video/whatever, so why not sit down with the 'pirates' (and I use that term incredibly loosely) and thrash out some sort of royalties deal?

Bombarding P2P sites with takedown notices and legal threats just pushes the whole thing even further underground, making it harder to police and shut them down.

This is a very interesting verdict. Now we just need to see when they start jailing people from Google and Youtube that actually have the illegal stuff on their own hard drives ... :rolleyes:

There is nothing to be talked about, this case is going to higher court at least and maybe even more higher so the law suit will take years to actually mean something.
 And to the other comments about a "deal" with record companies and organizations like pirate bay, when it is free it is free. You just can't compete with free and those are people who want it free. BUT there are amazing things like spotify that needs the support of people to keep up.

P2P is a fantastic resource for sharing all kinds of information and allowing people to share data that would be too large for everyone to drag from a single site (the Blizzard downloader). It is somewhere I can find all kinds of interesting copyright free or expired stuff. The Pirate Bay have nothing to do with the effective use of P2P as a sharing medium. They are all about being anti copyright. As a result they are part of the problem that is ruining the image of P2P and the legal sharing of resources.

I love their store of cease and desist notices and replies but won't miss their passing if they do actually get banged up for a few years. They were part of the process of ripping off peoples works. Not just big greedy movie and music execs but everyone who tried to create and sell anything on the Internet. The start up software house that went broke when it's first software release got ripped off before they even had a chance to market it. The game developer that gave up on PC games and began writing exclusively for consoles. Independent film makers and musicians, new authors the list goes on.

Sadly a conviction that sticks will give the big publishers the idea that they can still protect their profits by bullying the little guy through the courts. Nor will it stop anyone stealing stuff if they want to. Win or loose it will not be a good result for anyone

Quote from: Lexander;273013There is nothing to be talked about, this case is going to higher court at least and maybe even more higher so the law suit will take years to actually mean something.
And to the other comments about a "deal" with record companies and organizations like pirate bay, when it is free it is free. You just can't compete with free and those are people who want it free. BUT there are amazing things like spotify that needs the support of people to keep up.

This point is very valid, the major movie producers count every copy downloaded as 10 quid loss, or however much the dvd/mp3/game sells for. Now a LOT of the downloads are done to save having to pay for it. The reviews might not have been so good, or your just not intrested.
its just how it works. If the choise is between forking over money or not seeing/playing most of the time the choise for the ilegal downloads would go to not at all.

I've been watching this in earnest to be honest. It's truely a landmark case.
 
I couldn't believe how cocky these guys were acting even boasting that they felt that they were going to get off and then the next day citing that just like movies the news of their verdict was out before the release date..
 
Perhaps this will see a movement across the globe to shut down the p2p sites and make it less and less popular to download warez illegally..

Quote from: smilodon;273049P2P is a fantastic resource for sharing all kinds of information and allowing people to share data that would be too large for everyone to drag from a single site (the Blizzard downloader).

Blizzard downloader is P2P or did you mean that ?
  And yeah like inventions as P2P and torrents are fantastic but they are used to wrong purpose. I read somewhere that the inventor of torrent sharing is really angry about how it is used now, he said that it denigrates the technology and gives it an illegal "stamp". And they have lost many good opportunities to use it for cheap and legal sharing of music  and etc.
   And what goes to this case, TPB was somehow right BUT they did nothing to prevent the illegal downloading, rather they bumped it and got money from it.

Quote from: Lexander;273055Blizzard downloader is P2P or did you mean that?

Blizzard Downloader uses BitTorrent.  

Also, of interest, Valve hired Brahm Cohen, creator of BitTorrent before HL2 was released.

Sorry that's what I meant. I used the Blizz downloader as an example of a good use for P2P. The way I wrote was crap and could have been taken either way. Sorry


Remember the bad old days when every patch was a complete nightmare and you could write off playing any WOW for at least 48 hours, which was as long as it took to drag the file from Blizzards understandably limited resources.

Ah! No worries :)

Quote from: Lexander;273055TPB was somehow right BUT they did nothing to prevent the illegal downloading, rather they bumped it and got money from it.

As said before, so does google. TPB doesn't have any illegal material stored on the servers. It is the users that upload the link and share it, both legal and illegal. TPB provides the link but not the product. You can find identical links with google and other standard search engines.

What is boils down to: is it illegal to link to illegal products even though you don't provide the product yourself? Do TPB have an obligation to remove links that link to illegal products? Morally, without a doubt. Legally, possibly.

If dMw would have a post that links to TPB or any other site that provide links to illegal downloads (for example www.google.com (http://www.google.com)) does that mean that dMw could be trialed as well? Where should the "link line" be drawn?

Don't get me wrong. I do not defend TPB or piracy. I am just curious about the legal stuff vs. how the internet works. The owners of search engines and Youtube should be quite scared imho aswell as the server providers.

To be honest this verdict is entierly expected. Not because they are criminals, but because if they were found innocent can you imagine the chaos it would cause. Bit Torrent traffic would go through the roof, and it's seen as a green light.
I don't think they've done anything jail worthy and the fine certainly doesn't fit the crime. I'm not sure they earned much money from it, if any. It's the typical, we'll make an example out of one group and ignore the rest as it's too much effort to worry about all of them.
You've got to think who they've hurt. They've taken a copy of something and shared it. They've not stolen it, they've not destroyed the original. Yes some people who downloaded it might have bought it if the download wasn't an option. Many would have borrowed it from a friend or simply gone without. Each download is not a lost sale.

Everyone I know that pirates stuff spends a huge amount of their disposable income on the same products they pirate. If all pirates stopped buying stuff for a single week the impact would be seen clearly.

Quote from: Dr Sadako;273081As said before, so does google. TPB doesn't have any illegal material stored on the servers. It is the users that upload the link and share it, both legal and illegal. TPB provides the link but not the product. You can find identical links with google and other standard search engines.

Now that is an interesting point.TPB was just a couple of guys. Google is a much loved multi billion dollar empire with armies of lawyers. I doubt anyone has the nerve to actually want to go head to head with them in court. Or would at least think much longer and harder about it than with TPB.

Quote from: Dr Sadako;273081As said before, so does google. TPB doesn't have any illegal material stored on the servers. It is the users that upload the link and share it, both legal and illegal. TPB provides the link but not the product. You can find identical links with google and other standard search engines.

I'm also interested in this case, because it will be an ground for many more lawsuits coming up. And not taking any sides, this is just how I see it. The case was bad I admit that, the prosecutor failed to prove the link between TPB and illegal things mostly.

But about that, that is a good example. But here comes the difference between them. Google was made for a search engine to everything, to make people lives easier and as it covers most of the WWW there is going to be some rotten apples in the basket. In the other hand TPB was made for to help  people download everything for free, and they pumped that image out of them. And we all know that they aren't innocent here, look at the IPREDtor service, a service that allows people to surf anonymous, now where would you need that if you got nothing to hide ?

If we say Google is the pharmacy selling legal medicine, that can be used both in good and bad. But TPB is the guy around the corner of pharmacy selling same drugs but cheaper and without any prescription. Who goes to jail ?

Interesting stuff, what do you think ?

Tbh, i dont think just linking to it should be illegal. Morally incorrect maybe. But yes the points made above are true. You could charge google, or you-tube or possibly even dMw. Legal side of this case is very intresting.
 
Example is being made, but i am not sure this is the way to go about it.:g:

Quote from: smilodon;273087Now that is an interesting point.TPB was just a couple of guys. Google is a much loved multi billion dollar empire with armies of lawyers. I doubt anyone has the nerve to actually want to go head to head with them in court. Or would at least think much longer and harder about it than with TPB.

Well, Youtube has been, and is, taking some heat for having copyrighted music (videos) stored - and that is owned by Google? That said, you are right, going after TPB is a comparatively easier win than dealing with a mastodont like google...

Quote from: delanvital;273098Well, Youtube has been, and is, taking some heat for having copyrighted music (videos) stored - and that is owned by Google? That said, you are right, going after TPB is a comparatively easier win than dealing with a mastodont like google...

At least they are doing something to it :) http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/youtube-in-music-video-deal-with-universal/

Another point to take into account is that the links on TPB points at torrent files (.torrent) which could contain anything with any file name, if you want to go out on a limb. Do TPB need to download and check that the file linked actually is a legal/illegal file before allowing to posting the link? If so aren't they committing an illegal act by downloading pirated material to check the link? :g:

This might go a bit off topic but who says piracy won't do any harm ?
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
and
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/04/demigod-hit-by-massive-piracy-review-scores-take-beating.ars

So with a 90% piracy rate and a 1 in 1000 rate conversion to genuine sales. Thats around a 0.1% loss in overall sales.
The article about the servers being hammered is a little sad. It's a shame that a company trying to remove DRM would get hammered so much that it affects their online services.
However having had VERY bad experience with Stardock and their customer services I don't feel sorry for them. My brother bought a copy of Sins of a Solar Empire direct from them. The game was full price with an extra $12 international shipping and then when it arrived there were unpaid taxes. Despite the game being full price (no tax reduction on the online price). All together I think the game cost best part of $70, and an email to them to check if they'd double charged the tax or not sent it as tax paid etc got a response basically saying it's your problem. Getting rid of DRM in a game doesn't in my mind take back treating customers in this way.

Quote from: Lexander;273013You just can't compete with free and those are people who want it free.

Yes, you can - and that is exactly what the music and movie industry industry haven't figured out. They stick to their old and outdated business models with more complex/difficult solutions, less freedom and poorer quality than what you can get if you download from for instance TPB. You CAN compete with free if you manage to offer a better product.

Quote from: Ninja_Freak;273052Perhaps this will see a movement across the globe to shut down the p2p sites and make it less and less popular to download warez illegally..

I highly doubt it. With the amount of free PR TPB has botten during this trial (and will continue to get as the case moves higher up in the court system), TPB is probably more popular than ever.

Quote from: T-Bag;273083You've got to think who they've hurt. They've taken a copy of something and shared it. They've not stolen it, they've not destroyed the original. Yes some people who downloaded it might have bought it if the download wasn't an option. Many would have borrowed it from a friend or simply gone without. Each download is not a lost sale.

Everyone I know that pirates stuff spends a huge amount of their disposable income on the same products they pirate. If all pirates stopped buying stuff for a single week the impact would be seen clearly.

It is very hard to mage guesses about this, but I do think you - at least to some extent - are correct. It would be very interesting to see an experiment as you described, where every pirates stoped buying stuff for some time...

Quote from: Lexander;273088And we all know that they aren't innocent here, look at the IPREDtor service, a service that allows people to surf anonymous, now where would you need that if you got nothing to hide ?

The whole concept of the Internet is freedom - freedom of speach, sharing of knowledge etc etc. There are many places in the world where this is not an option, where people don't get to speak out their mind, and where vicious regimes hides to the rest of the world what is really going on within their borders. The Internet has given these people the ability to tell the rest of the world - and for this, services that for instance let you surf anonymous is extremely important.

Quote from: Bob;273129The whole concept of the Internet is freedom - freedom of speach, sharing of knowledge etc etc. There are many places in the world where this is not an option, where people don't get to speak out their mind, and where vicious regimes hides to the rest of the world what is really going on within their borders. The Internet has given these people the ability to tell the rest of the world - and for this, services that for instance let you surf anonymous is extremely important.

That is 100% true but we are talking about Sweden not China :)

I came over what I think is a very good article by Øyvind Solstad about this whole case. It was posted on NRK Beta (http://nrkbeta.no/epic-fail/) (The Norwegian national broadcast company's "sandbox for technology and new media". The have for instance experimented with publishing many of NRK's TV series using torrents, and are in general way ahead on new technology). I found it so good that I wanted to share it with you guys, so with good help from Google Translate, I here give you the English version :)

It is a bit of a long read, but I think you will find it worth your time. And at least, if nothing else, check out this 4 year old comic about "How Bob the Millionaire became a pirate" (http://eirikso.com/2005/06/06/how-bob-the-millionaire-became-a-pirate/). (And no, that Bob is not me - it is another Bob (as if I were a millionaire :narnar:))

Congratulations with wet pants
By Øyvind Solstad - April 17th, 2009
(http://nrkbeta.no/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/fail-570x194.jpg)
Fail - by Nima Badiey with a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

Everyone knows the expression "to pee in the pants to keep warm". Today, film and music industry won some really wet pants.

Stockholm court announced today the verdict against those who are behind the Pirate Bay and sentenced them to pay a compensation of 30 million Swedish kronor (around 24 million Norwegian kroner), and 1 year imprisonment. Read the full ruling here (pdf document) (http://go.nrk.no/go/e/article/http://www.nrk.no/contentfile/file/1.6570592%21Pirate_Bay_dom.pdf) or see the whole coverage of the Pirate Bay on nrk.nos summary page (http://nrk.no/nyheter/kultur/1.541048), as well as here on NRKbeta (http://nrkbeta.no/tag/tpb/).

The film and music rights organizations is obviously satisfied (http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/kultur/1.6570594), and in various media one can read that Norwegian artists will celebrate tonight. I feel they have no reason to. Here's why:

1) They get no money
Although the Pirate Bay lost, money will never be paid. There are no values of any size at the Pirate Bay they can get hold of, and the convicted says straight out that they would rather burn the money (http://thepiratebay.org/special/2009epicwinanyhow.php) than pay. So the artists and the organizations behind them will not get the money they were granted in the verdict.

2) Giant Advertising for the Pirate Bay
Through continuous coverage in the media in recent months, the Pirate Bay has gotten a PR they only could dream about. Even your grandmother knows how file sharing works (http://nrkbeta.no/bittorrent-for-din-bestemor/). It would be interesting to see how traffic has increased in recent months... The music and film industry have given their "worst enemy" the centre of attention, while they themselves are left outside. For what will happen after the verdict?

3) Users get even more angry
At forums, Twitter, Facebook, online newspapers and blogs people are writing straight out that they are never going to buy a single CD or DVD any more. The music and film industry have managed to make their best customers even more angry, and are risking boycotts and even worse loss in sales. A particularly poor strategy, and I wonder who it is sitting and making these strategies for them. "What if we ****ed of many of our customers? Especially those who are trend setters and help bring forward new artists?". Go for it.

4) Technically impossible
A verdict in Sweden will have no practical significance for the technical operation of the Pirate Bay. Their servers are scattered all over the world, and they say that even they do not know where they are. So even if the Pirate Bay will be sentenced in Sweden, the operation can continue just as before.

What should they do?

I've worked in marketing for many years, and in that field one often do what is called a SWOT analysis. It stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - explained here on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis).

What is then that is the strength of the Pirate Bay? It's free and easy.
What is the weakness? It is illegal with pirating. And file sharing is not so easy for those who doesn't know this already.
What are the possibilities here? You can get "customers" starting to use other solutions.
What are the threats? Many, but a threat is that many record companies go bankrupt, nobody will pay for anything, that you never manage to stop file sharing, etc.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the music and film industry have ignored the second term in the analysis of why the Pirate Bay is a success: They have only focused on the word free, and not on the word simple.

The music and film industry must ensure that their solutions are simpler than the Pirate Bay's. It is not quite so easy to download music from the Pirate Bay. You must...

- Write the name of a song in a field
- Click on the file
- Download
- Play

This can be done easier and better.

1) One CAN compete with free
Spotify is an excellent example (http://nrkbeta.no/dilemmaet-rundt-eie-eller-leie/). There are only two steps:

- Write the name of the song in the field
- Press play

iTunes on the iPhone is another. I sit in a cafe and hear a song. I hold the phone up in the air and start Shazam (http://nrkbeta.no/?s=shazam). It finds the song, I click on it and voila, I'm in iTunes Store, click on the purchase and enter my password. Two minutes later, I have the song with me - legally purchased on the phone.

So it is possible to make things easier than illegal downloading. Instead of making silly campaigns (http://nrkbeta.no/piracy-kills-music/) where you try to get young people to see the relationship between cemeteries and illegal downloading, use the time and effort to explain that there are alternatives that are easier.

Sit down with Telenor and Netcom and make mobile subscriptions where legally downloading of music is free/included - so that the kids do not have to pay in large amounts to download songs via 3G when they are on the move.

Sit down with top designers and create templates for how music stores should be. Why is it easier for me to buy plane tickets with Norwegian (a Norwegian air line company) than buying music on the web? Because Norwegian have put the customer first, and given me every opportunity to find the cheapest possible tickets at the time that suits me - they are on my side.

2) One world - not 200 countries
The music and film industry still believes that one sail across the Atlantic in steam boats. That one don't pick up things happening in the U.S. because we are in Norway. Therefore, they operate with licenses and agreements that total ignores that young people do not think of borders and where things come from. A cool song from Brazil? An exciting website in Australia? A designer from Canada? A shoe I can order from Iceland?

People do not realize why they cannot listen to certain songs in Spotify in Norway, but if you drive your car over the border and enter a web cafe in Sweden you can. They do not understand why they cannot see the U.S. music videos on YouTube or series on Hulu.com. They do not accept that lame executives in the music and film industry have not yet managed to create systems in which an artist can be released worldwide at the moment the person is signed up to a record label.

I think it is terrible that this is not resolves yet! It is 2009. We have had Internet for over 20 years. And still then, we have this artificial division of the world?

What is it young people spend most time on when they are online? Social networking. Across the world. Nobody cares about which country a person is in, what kind of network she has or where she was born.

3) Now. Not in a while but NOW.
Imagine that I am a fan of Lost (I am not - but let's pretend) and then the latest episode airs right now in the USA. Why can't I buy it and watch it here in Norway now? Not tomorrow, but now? My collegue Eirik Solheim made the comic "How Bob the Millionaire became a pirate" (http://eirikso.com/2005/06/06/how-bob-the-millionaire-became-a-pirate/) in 2005. As it is just as relevant today - four years later!!

(http://nrkbeta.no/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bob.jpg)

I still cannot buy U.S. shows even how much I pay here in Norway. I still cannot stream U.S. movies on boxes from for instance Get or Apple before several weeks after the movie has come in USA. I still have to wait until the movies are done in the cinema before I can see them at home. What kind of strange way of thinking is that? Why is it OK that I pay 100 kroner to see a premiere of a film in a theater, where it is several more links between those who create the film and me, while it is not possible to pay 100 kroner to see the same film legally at home? It doesn't make sense at all.  (It is also environmentally bad, as I have to go to the theater and also buy unnecessary chocolate and popcorn and gets unhealthy.)

While I was writing this article, Frode Svendsen commented the following in our article about the Pirate Bay verdict (http://nrkbeta.no/the-pirate-bay-tapte-saken/):

QuoteI heard a speech given by Cory Doctorow (http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/15/my-drm-and-ebooks-ta.html), a recognized author and blog journalist (http://craphound.com/), where he tells a little story about a software company you many have heard about (Valve) who said that the way they had reduced the highest number of stolen games from countries like Russia is zero-day release. In other words, earlier they chose to wait 1-3 months to launch new games in Russia, after they were launched in for example USA. The idea was that thus they could limit the amount of stolen copies... The truth was that when they stopped with this artificial pause between launches, the number of stolen copies plunged.

Exactly! Because it is now, not next week. It is exactly the same with all other media. Britney Spears' new album arrived in stores in Norway later than in the United States. In the meantime, lots of people had downloaded it.

We live in an age where people expect "instant gratification" - immediate satisfaction of needs - and then the music and film industry cannot work with "next week" or "this summer".

It is only NOW! that works.

Congratulations!

So congratulations to the music and film industry today. Together with your strategists and lawyers you have properly peed in your pants. It is hot and well now, but in a while it is even colder than it was before you started the lawsuit against the world's largest website for file sharing.

At the end I would like to add: I do not support illegal downloading of music: I buy music I like with iTunes, amiestreet and 7digital, I use Spotify when it is a party and I buy tons of DVDs that I rip and put on my home computer (with a heavy heard - crappy plastic - I would prefer to buy the movies DRM-free and download them).

I have friends that are musicians and are running record companies - and sees people helping themselves to their music without paying.

But I get annoyed by, in my opinion, the headless strategy behind this trial. And I don't get what the music and film industry are doing. They have content that everyone wants, but they do not manage to sell it to us in a proper manner? Fascinating and sad.

Bob summed it up very well. The movie companies are about 10 years behind. They still insist that everyone owns the disk, they have no internet standard. No "Steam" for movies. Where you can keep a collection online download them anywhere.
Series, movies, music, games online only, minimal DRM like steam. ISPs with unlimited traffic meaning you have access anywhere. Ability to make backups etc. This is the future.

With Sky+ I can keep a series on a harddrive legally. With Virgin on demand I can access stuff any time I want for free or a small fee. Why not use the internet to provide the same service.

It's not the price that makes piracy so desirable, it's the simplicity.

(I use Spotify more and more for my music, I use Steam exclusively for my games, but for TV series I'm left either waiting long after the series is over for it to eventually come out on disk, Sky+ it and watch it on TV...or download to day it comes out if for £1* an episode I could get them legally I'd be happy to carry on.

* For instance Lost season 3 = 22 episodes box set is £27 so the £1 an episode mark is about right when you cut out the cost of the disks and the profits for amazon and the shipping costs they've factored in. That should be about right for a 45min episode. 20min programs would have to have a lower price tag. This is just a ballpark figure to show that the prices are realistic.

With a service like steam where you can log in anywhere on a pc or a set-top box (say eventually around £50 mark when the catch on) you can hook up to your TV to watch these things on a big screen. This would instantly become a HUGE hit overnight if they could agree the royalties and the technical details. No limited downloads, no over the top DRM.

I have mixed feelings about that article, it is true that the big record companies should find a way to make it easier and better. But as spotify is an brilliant example you can't use it here. YOU CAN NOT GET ANYTHING FOR FREE, and spotify goes around that problem by streaming the music. You don't get anything to your HDD and you need an internet connection for it to work. And there is lots and lots of easy to use and cheap music services like the mentioned iTunes, but why don't people use them ? I will give an example, my friends: I have been trying to bump spotify for all to use but all I get is "Why should I use that because I can download the whole discography for free in few minutes?". Same with movies, there are many shops alone in Finland that rent movies by streaming them but the same quote stays here aswell.

The defence is always "make it better and we will use it" when they make something no-one uses them so why is that?
Funny how people demand lower prices and use that as an explanation, but the the next day they demand more salary at work.

also read about that "preventing 1000 piracy attempts results in only a single additional sale"

Well I can honestly say that I bought more then 1 real product for every 1000 I downloaded (way way way more, and I doubt I'll reach my first 1000 any time soon). As I've said before I'm under the impression that a lot of users like me used the piracy attempts more like sampling, and by doing so I came in contact with a lot more programs, games, movies or bands etc. I like and bought, then that I would have by going to the store alone. So I've bought more stuff extra then that I pirated, and I believe that goes for a lot of people.


But of course those big multy bilionair companies don't want to see that, they just see the downloaded figures and think: OMG I could have made a bilion more on that product, no fair no fair, I fairly stole it from an Indian dude who came up witht he idea in the first place....


Edit:

Hmm 1 pound per episode T-Bag.
They should do that with Anime too, I mean, 20 euros for 5 episodes (only 20 mins per ep) on disc version (of a 20-600 episode series) can make me poor really really fast. They should make it 20-50 cents per episode view (not own it but view) or something, that way the whole world can watch a serie without having to wait for the shipment to reach (if they ever) to hit your country (sure you can get naruto, deathnote and bleach here, but there are a lot more out there). That way the companies get extra funding, without the costs of discs or shipment...

Edit:

Interesting read Bob, great article that pretty much covered the whole Piracy issue. Only now it is missing one thing, imagine that a new AC/DC cd costed 11 dollars in the U.S. at launch day and that the same excact cd costs 22 euros in Holland, whats wrong??
Its not even twice as much, since 1 euro is 1.30 dollars.

Quote from: Lexander;273141I have been trying to bump spotify for all to use but all I get is "Why should I use that because I can download the whole discography for free in few minutes?".

I think it is indeed sad if this is what you experience. But I think Spotify - and alternatives like it, both for music and films - will come more and more.

I for instance almost don't play any of the music I have on my computer any more. I only use Spotify - both at home and while at work - because it is better and easier (the only thing I miss, is that you are given the opportunity to take the music with you on your portable music device - but I think that kind of options will come in the future). And the feedback I get from my friends and co-workers as well, is that they all love the Spotify service.

One cannot expect people to change their habbits over the night, but if good alternatives are given and they are proven to actually be better than "the pirate bay way", more and more people will gradually move over.