Thank you very much for your thoughts an input! I greatly appreciate it.

The more restrictions RIAA manages to impose, the more people will question their moral, so one day they would end with no-one to represent. Artists will sooner or later try to distance themselves from it and labels (if they are still alive and kicking) will certainly follow suit because nobody can be at war with the Customer.

The Customer is unhappy not because he's not allowed to get the stuff for free – in fact there are many “free” offers from many different businesses we encounter everyday, which we choose to ignore. That's because we believe in Value. But the value of the product is not imposed on us, it is created in cooperation with us (advertising > user experience > satisfaction).

What the music industry tries to do at the moment is to impose such a Value by force. That won't work even though organizations like RIAA pretend it will. The only solution to this problem is to open this business to the inevitable change that has already happened in our lives – because today “copy” and “paste” are words we encounter as often as “thank you”.

Right now I sit on a computer which can perform both actions without interruption. If Microsoft implemented a function in Windows that preceded every “paste” action bringing up a warning message “Are you sure you hold the copyright to what you are attempting to copy?”, its market share wouldn't be what it is today. It's as simple as that – people can copy. It's easier than sneezing. If you want to stay relevant to this change, you have to reinvent your product and add an adequate value to it. And that won't happen with extra CD booklets and a free poster of your favourite rap star, packaged in an ultra special collectors edition where you can hear the conversations in the studio in which the X greatest album of all time was recorded. There is a limit to what you can squeeze out even from your most devoted fan. The industry just pretends it doesn't know it. Yet.

Today, in most countries of the world, you have to get out of your house, get in your car and chase an album in the shops if you want to obtain it legally. Some of us still do it, others become tired and choose an easier way. And if they decide to go to file sharing networks, it's not necessarily because they don't want to pay. They just don't want to be ridiculed. It would be fair to assume that among those people, there are many which still think copyright is important or are at least aware of what it stands for. But in the end of the day they ask themselves a very interesting question – why should copyright “waste” my time? Why can't I behave respectfully without unnecessary stupid restrictions? Why is the industry so paranoid? Is it because it doesn't trust me? Then how can I trust IT?

It's not the concept of copyright that is in danger in this battle. It is the irrelevant entertainment industry itself. Of course they would try to use copyright as a shield and persuade you that by clicking the easy download button you're endangering the foundations of our civilization. But it's a cheap trick to get more attention, nothing else.