On topic
I came across this BBC article today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3117505.stm
"Last month, the association began suing hundreds of its customers. For the RIAA - which represents the major US recording companies - this makes perfect sense.
According to the RIAA, CD sales dropped by 10% in 2001 and a further 6.8% last year, largely because of file sharing.
But the figures tell a different story.
In just three years, sales of pirate CDs have more than doubled, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Every third CD sold is a pirate copy, says the federation.
In some countries it is hard to find legitimately produced CDs. Ninety percent of CDs in China, for instance, are pirate copies.
For Mark Mulligan, an analyst with Jupiter Research, the music is weathering a hangover after the 80s and 90s boom, when everyone was buying CD versions of their old vinyl records.
"Now the CD replacement cycle has drawn to a close," he says.
Also the global decline in CD sales is taking place against the background of a general economic recession that is depressing sales of almost everything.
The music industry cannot hope to sue everyone using file sharing to find music as that would take hundreds of years and already the US legal system is complaining about the work the RIAA is heaping upon it.
There is no doubt that some piracy is going on via peer-to-peer systems but maybe not to the extent the RIAA fears. Perhaps it is about time they sang a different song."
If this article is correct the RIAA are a bunch of incompetent ass***** who are going after file sharers to draw attention away from the piracy problem they can't or won't deal with.