RIAA issued a public statement regarding to last week’s shutdown of MegaUpload on their blog yesterday:

Fortunately, shutdowns of these types of hubs for illegal activity are not unprecedented. In October of 2010, Limewire (the most popular P2P service at the time) was shut down, and just like this week, millions of users were forced to find new sources for their content. Although some contingent of users remain fixated on stealing music rather than using any of the myriad legal – and often free – services available, we have seen strong evidence that many users quickly switch to legal sources. According to the NPD Group, Limewire users left by the millions in the months after the shutdown (see here). And just like this week with Megaupload and its ilk, the shutdown of one major source led to decreases across other similar services as well.

[...]

Collectively, this evidence strongly suggests that the shutdown of illegal sites helps create a thriving and diverse digital marketplace. It encourages users to go to legitimate sites, and enables great new services to be launched – like Spotify, which launched in the US last year and quickly signed up millions of new users. It’s always reassuring when the data we see in the market reflects what we thought was just common sense.

Why Closing Megaupload Matters [RIAA]

Well, if they say so. Anyway, Julian Sanchez offers some common sense counter-arguments here.