Interesting topic...
In my opinion, P2P companies are irrelevant to P2P networking itself. Most P2P programs (or at least the good ones, without backdoors and stuff) have been developed as open source, and to me it seems some of the "companies" are trying to make money from open source development - or from the media buzz that's happening around this topic. In our time, you don't need a product or service to make money - all you need is the media.
Another point is that these "companies" are "real people" (or "real companies"), not groups of private persons developing software. Thus they are much more vulnerable to judicial attacks, and they _have to_ settle with media companies and the law, or get shut down.
If the movie/recording accociations or media companies would have a way to shut down P2P for good, they'd used this a looooong time ago.
I'd just wish all the large media companies would think of alternative ways of keeping their customers. They've ripped us off with highly overpriced, bad-quality products for over ten years now, and all they can think of is sueing everyone (even private persons!). I'd think about pricing, distribution, and _QUALITY_ if i was one of the "Big Guys". It seems the large media companies are slowly starting to move in that direction, but it seems to take a long time to turn the Titanic around.
Just my €0.02