Comment by kyboren

No, it was a much better system.

Like all piracy, it didn't condition access on payment. And like all P2P, more users (because free) meant more content available to everybody.

The rules weren't perfect, but they imposed order and organization and prevented harmful (for P2P networks) duplication and fragmentation. Like any society, the rules helped to provide a framework to solve a coordination problem in a hopefully-global-utility-maximizing way.

The result was a vibrant community cooperatively maintaining a virtual Library of Alexandria of music where library cards were cost free.