DISPENSING with the bluster that normally surrounds the issue of pirated movies and music, Anders Bylund of Ars Technica tries to appeal to business sense in arguing that media companies should stop suing their potential customers and instead try to serve them (arstechnica.com).

Media piracy will always be with us. But the pirates, Mr. Bylund writes, “can be beaten — it happens all the time — but not primarily by means of legal threats and lawsuits.” Rather, he says: “You subjugate these rebels with the tools of free enterprise. Piracy is just another business model, and the pirates will lose and go away when you come up with a better model.”

Consumers make buying decisions based on three factors, according to Mr. Bylund: “price, convenience and quality.” Pirates will always win on price (free), but media companies can and do beat them on the other factors. Among the examples he cites is the cable channel Comedy Central, owned by Viacom (comedycentral.com). The Web site offers the complete archives of “The Daily Show” and makes them searchable. Hulu, owned by NBC and Fox, offers many television shows and some movies with limited (and short) advertisements (hulu.com). All are offered in high-quality video.

But it should not stop there, Mr. Bylund says. “Figure out an ad-supported model if you can, or charge less than a dollar per episode. Let people burn it to DVD or play the file on iPhones for a buck.” Eventually, “piracy will force all the big-time content producers to move in this kind of direction,” Mr. Bylund says. “Capitalism, properly applied, will beat the rebels every time.”

A GREAT TIME WASTER Slate does not mean to insult anyone when it says that this week’s package on procrastination “will appeal to every single person reading the magazine.” Even if you are not a procrastinator, maybe you long to be. Or, failing that, you surely know someone who procrastinates. And if you are a can-do, industrious type, Daniel Gross’s “Lazy Money” guide to investing in companies that appeal to procrastination — purveyors of tobacco, coffee, Web sites, online video and even this newspaper — might be for you (slate.com).

Other articles in the package include “Procrastinators Without Borders: Do the Japanese Waste More Time Than We Do?” by Heather Smith; “Like There’s No Tomorrow: How Economists Think About Procrastination,” by Ray Fisman; and a manifesto, “Procrasti-Nation: Workers of the World, Slack Off!”

THOSE DARNED KIDS “Web 2.0” has forgotten about the Internet, according to Allan Leinwand, a venture capitalist writing at GigaOM. All the social networks, big blog sites, video hosts and wikis out there may yawn when “router-hugging relics of the past century” tell them they need to pay attention to basics, Mr. Leinwand says. But when things break down, they will wish they knew as much about the Internet’s underlying technology as they do about Python, Ajax and all the other software that is used to create Web 2.0 sites. Those error messages that routinely show up on MySpace and AllMusic could well be thanks to a young programmer’s lack of adequate Web 1.0 knowledge (gigaom.com).

HAPPENS ALL THE TIME A frequently asked question that was posted until recently on the child labor section of the Georgia Department of Labor’s Web site read: “I am a 17-year-old teacher with a Ph.D. in physics. I am married and have a child. Do I need a work permit?” The bizarre made-up question was finally removed, but still shows up in Google’s cache, and a screen shot can be found at tinypic.com. DAN MITCHELL