[douche]

Bittorrent filled a hole when it was pretty much impossible to legitimately obtain digital content, at any price.

When was the last time you torrented a music album? Thanks to iTunes and Spotify and Youtube, you don't really need to anymore.

When was the last time you bothered torrenting a cracked PC game? It's not worth the effort, when you can pick it up on a Steam or GOG sale for the cost of a Big Mac and fries.

TV and movies are to some extent still locked away like that, particularly movies. I hope that somebody is making an effort to back up that cultural heritage before the cellulose rots.

[tinus_hn]

Spotify wouldn't have existed if the music companies' hand hadn't been forced by piracy.

[toast0]

Spotify is basically launchcast, but with more customers, and launched 7 years later. Internet based music piracy and personalized radio came into popular availability at around the same time, because people started having connections fast enough to download or stream songs.

[xanderstrike]

Spotify succeeded where others failed because the RIAA basically picked it as a winner.

[imh]

Add to that, I don't even know where I can buy a digital copy of most movies. I know I can sorta rent rights to them on amazon, google, etc, but to actually be able to use it as I please and copy from device to device? Itunes is the only one I know to be close to that.