Girl-with-the-Thorn
Still here.
Should youtube be taken down also? It seems most official recordings can be found and played right on the site. On this site links are posted, the files of official recordings are not actually on the site. Under the DMCA the links can be taken down by request as it makes the downloads easy. As I've mentioned before, I comply with any valid requests from the copyright holders but they really should go after the sites that host the downloads. Since all those official recordings remain on YouTube it seems whoever is responsible for the copyright doesn't seem to mind or care.
That's true. Even without torrents and downloads on sites such as this one, it is extremely easy to find a track on Youtube and have it on your iPod within a matter of minutes. Like you said, there doesn't seem to be much change with regards to what is available on there, so I don't think copyright is the overriding issue here.