Brad Stone of The New York Times found some evidence that suggests just that. In an article posted Saturday, he said that people are finally starting to take notice of some subscription movie- and music-streaming sites because — get this — they just work better.

Huh. Who knew?

Yep, apparently sites like Imeem, Netflix, MySpace Music, Spotify and more are attracting people who might otherwise have used file-sharing software to download programs and songs illegally. Some of them are free, with advertising used to support them. Others are subscription-based.

Stone cites two recent studies in his article, from British researchers The Leading Question and MusicAlly, both of which said that teens 14-18 used illegal file-sharing software such as BitTorrent considerably less than they did two years ago — going from 42 percent to 26 percent over a period from December 2007 to January 2009. That was in the United Kingdom.