If torrenting is gone, won't we just find another way to pirate?

[aLkaLiNE]

Filesharing won't see a demise in the foreseeable future; if I were an artist who wanted to put out a free EP then torrent sites would be an excellent resource to gain fans.

Now, do I think it can be stopped? Absolutely. Most pirates use search engines to find the torrent they want and Google is so heavily filtered now that its become significantly harder to find meaningful results. Multiple hosting sites have been shut down or repurposed (hulkshare, mediafire, zippyshare) and over the course of the past 4 years there's been a very big effort to censor the web. Look up SOPA.

I personally think that in the multi billion dollar industry of entertainment media, piracy has its own value and place. Judging by the record breaking profits we see every year from movie companies I find it hard to see any significant harm done. Music is highly profitable, games are profitable and the things you see torrented most are all uber mainstream products like CoD or the mind numbing garbage played on radio.

Look at the tech companies. These are among the biggest, richest and most powerful influences in the world. The only ones having trouble posting profit are doing so not because of piracy but because of poor management, mistargeted products or inaccurately analyzing core demographic. Look at Sony - their gaming division is highly profitable despite piracy. The situation they're in stems from a lack of Tv /Phone hardware sales.

Musicians might bitch about not making enough, but I think that when you have uber mega overpaid acts like Eminem setting what the rest of an industry thinks should be a precedent then of course they'll complain about not raking in millions. If I could leave my every day job to go tour the world all expenses paid, to be idolized by nations and to have women thrown at me night after night while still getting paid then I find little room to complain. How many artists really live at the poverty line?