I believe RIAA’s eventual effort to prevent music piracy will end up nowhere. These controls are just living on borrow time. The internet is getting bigger everyday. Everyday, increasingly new numbers of ppl are exposed to it.

The worse is still to come. Once the computer becomes affordable to thirdworld countries like Africa, where MIT is trying to market a $100US computer, all hell will broke lose. Even BSA, RIAA’s efforts will be totally in vain, and  they will probably become history too.

A monster like the internet, can only grow stronger and bigger each day, they can forget about controlling it, it will just backfire. Maybe once a while, these companies will find some scrapegoats to sue, but that only represents less than 0.01% and will continue to grow lesser, as the cost of sueing pirates get more expensive, and also because those pple will be much willing to resort to piracy as the risks of been caught gets smaller.

Rather than just fight it, it will be better for the music industry to think up new paradigms to monetize their business. The traditional way of music business will die a slow death.
For example, even Michael Jackson, whitney houston, and tons of musicians that used to bet on “eternal” royalty on album sales are ending up as paupers now. That will also happen to all music companies eventually. Sony EMI, and other music companies with their current infrastructures that used to bring them great wealth is fast becoming a liabilitie and will obstruct them from moving forward.

The only winner will be online stores like Apple.

Well, if they really want to stop piracy, the only way is to unplug the internet, and the good old days of earning profits will be back. The Internet is about power to the consumer and user, and removing the internet will return power to the supplier.