"As much as piracy is difficult to justify"

It's not difficult at all, actually. The U.S. Constitution is pretty clear on what the purpose of copyright is. The protections afforded to creators of artistic works are granted for a LIMITED time...not for free, but in exchange for an agreement from the creators that their works will enter the public domain at the end of that time. The content industry has made it abundantly clear that they have no intentions whatsoever in honoring their end of the bargain. As such, the public has ABSOLUTELY no moral obligation continue to respect their "rights".

And nothing of value was lost.

I don't know. Does Quantas NEED 3,300 more employees? Wouldn't offering employees pay rates at the top of the industry attract the best employees available? After all, that's the argument the elites use to justify seven or eight figure incomes for CEOs. I mean, they HAVE to pay that much in order to attract the best candidates.

What type of MORON keeps a balance of $500,000 in BTC?

Sure the Ferrari has added features, but is it really worth $100,000.00 or more than a Kia, given that the parts aren't that different, the assembly time is not all that different

Actually, the assembly time is quite a lot different. Ferraris are built individually by hand. One of the reasons they are so expensive is that, even at such a high price, demand outstrips supply. They only make a couple of thousand cars a year.

Besides if you watch the real Olympics almost all the athletes are injured from over training.

Yes, well that and the fact that they had to stop taking their steroids long enough to pass the drug test.

Of course not, that would be un-American. Instead, they contracted Boeing or Halliburton, who ran their usual act of hiring a circle of private consultants taking massive cuts of the pie, and bought the PS3s for $750,000 a piece instead of $399 and stuck the taxpayers with the bill.

However, as to the length of the symphonies, I'd be willing to be the majority of symphonies are under 30 minutes. I don't think any symphony reached 40+ minutes in length until the Eroica.

Out of the 26 symphonies mentioned, only Beethoven 1&2 were written before Eroica.
All four of the Brahms symphonies are 45-60 minutes.
Tchaikovsky 4-6 are all 45 minutes or longer, not sure about 1-3 but I'd be willing to bet they're well over 30 minutes.
Some of the Sibelius symphonies are pretty obscure, but the 2 well known ones are both pushing an hour (and given Sibelius' style I'd be surprised if any of the others are less than 45)
The only ones that are considerably less than 40 minutes are some of the Beethoven...1 and 2 for sure, 7 is shortish...3,6, and 9 are all big, long works...have to admit I'm not that familiar with 4 or 8.

This is great news, but that's 26 complete symphonies, probably something along the lines of 17 hours of music (at an average of 40 minutes each...that's probably a little low actually). Add in rehearsal times and I have serious doubts about the feasibility of doing this for $13,000. I wish them luck, but I'd rather have less music at a higher quality than more with an amateur-level ensemble.

but because they settled out of court the lawyers got most of the settlement money, not the people

Horseshit. The lawyers took the same percentage from the settlement as they would have had they gone to court and won. And that percentage was not a secret amount undisclosed to the people who willingly made themselves a part of the class action. They were perfectly free to go after Paypal on their own if they didn't like the terms.

When someone does this sort of hacking/eavesdropping/snooping to a government official, it's called "a shocking invasion of...privacy and a violation of law."

Invasion of privacy, huh? That's interesting, since according to Republican politicians and the judges they put on the bench there is no such thing as a right to privacy.