The movie and music business is trying to suppress a new report stating that pirates are actually better customers than those on the right side of the law.
read more here:
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/movie-industry-bins-report-proving-pirates-are-great-consumers-20110720/
Is pirated material in reality the best advertising the business can get or does it hurt the business such as the music and movie business have claimed through many years, what do you think?
I really don't get the point of the article. Yes, that one pirate may be the one buying a lot of music and videos. But what about the 200 other people who then download the music and videos instead of legally purchasing it? Just looking at the overall music industry for the last 2 decades show how record sales have dropped.
Great for promotion - Crap for sales
Froggy - I see your point but you are actually talking about something else than what I originally had in mind as topic. I basically agree that pirating might be one of the reasons, although not the main reason to what you say, in my opinion people tend to excess the impact of pirating and down-tone other important factors such as market change (people moving from CD-player to mp3), customer behavior change, economic crises etc.
Andrea - Don't know if you missed the point then 
the point of the investigation is that pirates generally spend more money on movies/music than people who don't do pirating, yes there will always be people who spend less than the average, no rule without exceptions, but that is the general tendency 
The reason to a drop in record sales might as well be due to a wide range of other reason as I indicated in the reply to Froggy, rather than just pirating, not saying that pirating is not one of them.
Well if the original question was about the choice between goodness or badness of pirates, that's my opinion, because all that happened to our genre is most of all due to them!
Pirating is illegal so no doubt about it's wrong, but I disagree that pirating is the reason to the downfall of italodance.
well not only those, who buy things and put them on the net, spend more than and average person. I also think some of the people who download a lot of music (or other kind of files, but lets just talk about music) sometimes spend more money than the average.
I wont talk about myself so lets take my immaginary friend, Frank. Frank likes music a lot, and listens to it in the car, while he is running, when he is relaxing at home and when he busts his brain and liver with alcohol. Therefore, Frank doesn't listen the same tracks over and over again, that would bore him, and he is always on the look for new good tunes.
Unfortunately Frank is a student, and he doesn't have a lot of cash. So he can't afford to buy all new cds to find out that he only likes 2 or 3 tracks on each. So this is what frank do:
When new tunes come out, new compilations (one of Franks favourites is the dj selection) ect. ect. he downloads them or listens to the tracks at youtube, grooveshark or a equivalent services on the internet, which by the way are legal. This way he can listen to the songs some days and find out which of the songs he really likes and would add to his playlist, music library on the computer, put in his ipod ect.
Those songs, he will either buy on single or as mp3-download at sites like itunes, beatport or junodownload, or if he likes most of a compilation, he might buy the whole one aswell. This way Frank can buy his favourite music and support the artists without spending a fortune on music he doesn't like and won't ever listen to.
At the same time, when Frank hears some of his favourite musicians have koncerts in the area where Frank lives, he gladly pays half his monthly wage to get there.
Not everyone does like Frank, some people are only does the first step - but there are people like Frank out there, and it is thanks to the pirates on the net that the music he likes from less famous record companies without massive commercial-budgets has been promoted. If it wasn't for them, Frank would never know these artists as they aren't aired a lot in the radio. So indirectly, the pirates have brought in new costumers to the music bussiness, although not every fish in the net is eat-able. But they wouldn't buy records anyway, so there has been no waste.
Today the money in music aren't in record sales but in royalties, tours/koncerts and a little in mp3-downloads. So if a musicians gets extremely popular because of free downloads, songs on youtube - he will be able to earn money on koncerts and get massive amounts from MTV because they have to play his new video all the time to satisfy the crowd.
I don't think pirates are "good" people, but companies have begun to try and earn money in different ways. And i mean, on youtube, its the artist themselves who upload songs (or their companies) and they earn shit loads of money on commercials and stuff when you click those vevo-things and sponsored pages. We have also seen people become superstars because of sites like youtube. So i don't think everything is for the worse, allthough i do agree that pirates are destroying the music bussines in some way.
hope you got the point
i agree in your disagree
i don't think pirates are destroying italodance, and in some way, as the situation is now, they help keeping it alive. Wierd enough
Well, I knew italodance because of pirates, and I used to download music illegally, but I've learned that it's not good for the gender to get music in that way...
I can't afford to buy music, but I stopped downloading music illegally since I can't support the artist and the gender by buying their music, it's what I can do at least. 
But I have options: ISR,IDN, Italian Style, Youtube, etc in order to listen to Italo.
And whether pirates are good people or not...well, as McWaust said "Great for promotion - Crap for sales " 
I finally read your way too long reply Alessio..
Well to come with some other examples of artists who became famous due to the "internet effect", I could mention Basshunter, started making a silly song available for download freely from his website, people downloaded and shared it and shortly after he had a record deal and is now living on money from live concerts, not record sales for sure.
Justin Bieber is another example, he became popular because of youtube which where shared by people on the net, he is a huge success today also.
Pirating may be bad for record labels, but for the artists it can be a huge boost.
I think most people who download songs, wouldn't have bought the real thing anyway... therefore the music industry doesn't loose so many customers. I think the music industry has to change their mind in this case. They should think about producing more merchandise for the artists, more gigs and live concerts... maybe the ticket prices will raise, but this would be ok for me.
And it's true, Justin Bieber is an internet phenomena.
I think that our own genre is one of the biggest victims of pirates!
The music can be spreaded worldwide now, that's for sure... but when HSG released their first and last album, only 300 copies were sold, viceversa about 5000 copies have been spreaded illegally (and I say 5000 in order to not say 10000 or 20000!!)... and when Prezioso or Molella decided to produce electro and house music they were in crisis with the musical market that could no more guarantee them to sell enough copies to compensate their huge work.
Lots of artists forced to change, lots of works litterally STOLEN, lots of good italodance lost forever... but M2o had to continue its job with dance music until 2007, because it had a compilation to fill up and a crew of listeners to satisfact... so here's the birth of serious c**p like Koka Express, Ghost DJ, JollyMask, Ato, Shazan, I could go on until tomorrow morning... people unable to produce good stuff, only with 2 kicks and 2 notes of bassline, people who produce music only for fun!
Before pirates we knew Vanni G, Eiffel 65, Hotel Saint George, Maverick, Roby Rossini, SMS, DJ Ross and a lot of professional kicking artists, after 2005 we've had DJ Jajo, Boing Squad, DJ Power and the worst of the worst among everyone else: Kaptiva!
Why this? Because yesterday someone decided to rip off Molella LP and spread it into forums. Because yesterday someone decided to download HSG's CD instead of buying it. Because yesterday someone decided to spend his money into alcohol instead of investing it for his favourite DJ.
There is one thing I've always wanted to say to every pirate crying for the lack of italodance in its own birth country: "Did you eat somuch yesterday?!? Well, there's nothing odd if today you've got an huge sea of s**t!!"
__________________
Qualcuno ha detto che la musica maranza è morta...... ma la musica maranza è viva!!
PERCHE' SIAMO VIVI NOI !!!
Got SKYPE? Add me! Write DeeJay Froggy and find me.