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Elvish Piper says that you may put that card onto the battlefield, not play it without paying it's mana cost. There is a very distinct difference between the two.

Looking at Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, it says [QUOTE]When you cast Emrakul, take an extra turn after this one.[/QUOTE]
This means, that if it were put into play, the ability would no trigger as it is not being "cast".

Of course, i could go into the differences in different abilities such as ripple and cascade. However, i have already done this in a different thread, so i'm just going link the thread here.

So, this brings up the question of whether or not a creature played this way can be countered. Emrakul can't be anyways, but others?

You can only counter spells that are on the stack. When you use an ability to put a creature into play (like Elvish Piper) it's not the creature that goes on the stack it's the Elvish Piper ability. If you want to prevent the creature from comming into play you need to counter the Elvish Piper ability. This can only be done by spells or abilities that say "Counter target activated ability". Such spells are Stifle, Voidslime, Trickbind.
Lets say I activate Elvish Piper and you play Stifle to counter the activated ability. In this case Emrakul would not be put on the battlefield and the player controlling Elvish Piper would just keep Emrakul in his hand. Elvish Piper remains tapped as tapping it was part of the cost and as such he can't activate the ability again until after his next untap step.