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The RIAA has for years robbed the Artists and are worried about continuing they blame downloading for slower growth in sales I believe the quality of music has degraded to where people in my age group and above refuse to buy inferior sounding music and if you are lucky to find a good recording Artist's work they don't have but maybe one or two songs on Album worth purchasing the # of songs that are acceptable are lackluster at best.I say give me a Audiophile quality download option that is controlled by the Artist themselves and charge by the Song and i will buy a lot of Music and Artist can pay the leeches a small fee.I don't like it that Mom and Pop stores will be put out of Business i still like touching and going through the bins of old Lp's.I wish for analog recording's on the Cd's that look liek a old Lp there is nothing like a great sounding Lp the 96khz and 192khz are bout the best we will get though.

CD'S SOLD BECAUSE THEY WERE MORE COVINENT FOR THE AVAGE USER. DVD'S ARE AN IMPROVEMENT OVER VIDEO TAPE.THE USE OF SACD AND DVD-A WITH A PCM TRACK ON ALL MUSIC AT, THE RIGHT PRICE, USING A SINGLE DIGITAL CONNECTION COULD POSSIBLE DO THE SAME FOR MUSIC SALES. ALL PLAYERS WOULD HAVE TO PLAY ALL FORMATES INCLUDING DVD-V.

They are greedy idiots; if they happen to die in great pain, 'tis OK with me. Their attack on online audio streaming is in the same category.

The artist should be paid for their work. I've never downloaded a song, and I still buy music at 49 years old. I still don't understand how folks can like MP3 music. If thats all I had to listen to, I'd hate music.

The music industry has got to wake up to the fact that music sucks nowdays!

Let me get this straight: When the market starts to dictate new terms and modes of delivery, and industry is too pig headed to deliver what the customers want, the industry is going to sue its customers out of existence?

The music industry was founded by mobsters and has long celebrated the outlaw life. It's ironic that the RIAA is now screaming "victim" and clinging to the law in its fight for life. I have no sympathy.

It looks like a scare tactic that may be working but there is way too much free music already out there for the RIAA to have any real effect on downloading music. The only thing RIAA is doing is making their lawyers richer.

The RIAA is protecting an outdated business model. But the people who really need to stand up are the artists who've been hurt by the record industry. They need to tell the public how it is, how the royalties are fiddled with and the hype is un-true

Sueing your customers is not a good idea!

Putting the record companies aside, it is the musician's intellectual property that is so cavalierly stolen by free down-load services and file sharing. The situation reminds me of the early days of rock & roll (even now) when producers would "steal" the musicians work. Sometimes you do need a very large bat to gain the attention of individuals who are ethically challenged. If I choose to place my intellectual property in the public domain, it is my choice; not the choice of some

Research revealed in these pages indicates that they are actually persecuting exactly those most likely to become, or encourage others to become, their biggest consumers. I still turn folks on to new music by giving them cassettes of our records and CDs. Now my brother-in-law is a fan of The Roots because of that. Notice that the RIAA website has no "contact us" button. Talk about heads in the sand!

I have a great idea! Since no one's is buying our trashy music, let's sue our customers out of their money! Brilliance I tell you. Now would be a good time to be a lawyer.

The RIAA is trying to deal with a 21st century technology with a 18th century process. There approach is akin to taking on a modern army with rocks. The people who are being groomed for the earning power to sustain the industry, long term, have been attacked and they (students and young people) are circling the wagons. The RIAA is technologically deficient and is trying to kill an ant with a wrecking ball. Statistics show that the RIAA is losing it dollar to crappy products that people are not willing to spend their money on, and not the download technology. If copying was the problem the cassettes of the seventies would have shut down the recording industry. The industry is on the ropes because of greed and the resistance to invest in products that people want. Just because they spend millions to package BS doesn't make the BS a pearl. Have the RIAA get the industry to produce "artists" and get the bean counters and lawyers out of the loop. Then we may have people that are willing to purchase music. If the industry were smart they would make their catalogs available to colleges as a service. Students would be able to hear anything they wanted, but wouldn't be able to trade without violating the honor system. Watermark songs to each campus and fine the college for transgressions to the coping rule. Word of mouth would get people to listen to the music at various campuses and in turn concerts would be booked and music sold. You get a lot more ants with honey than with .... The alternative is the anomosity of a generation of tech savvy guerrilas. In a technological battle the RIAA and recording industry is unarmed. If the RIAA were smart they would declare victory and stop this pursuit of students.

Eh, it gives lawyers something to do. The Roman empire didn't fall in a day, either.

There is nothing more pathetic than the wails and moans of pain coming from ivory towers. I don't download and I buy only from small independent labels. If there's something I like and I find out it's on one of the major labels, I walk away. Let's give them a reason to bitch!!

I buy my music in a hard copy format. I don't download music at all. I do listen to music sound bites on the various web sites that sell music to see if I like the music before I purchase, but this is maybe only 10% of what I buy. Freeloaders make prices for me higher, artist salaries lower and give record companies less profit to support new groups. Yes, I think record companies need to make money! Now, I don't necessarily agree with what they do with it - but that's besides the point. Whether they are evil or not, it does not make stealing right.

The RIAA is a complete waste of time.

The arrogance of the RIAA is remarkable. Magically, it ignores the down economy, the lousy music the labels are putting out, as well as the increased popularity of video games and DVDs when it comes to assessing the reasons why sales are down. Then, there's the issue of price-fixing, which went to court and has resulted in the labels having to make a cash payout to consumers

If it continues unabated, yes I believe that downloading could hurt the artists and those involved in producing music. However, going after the downloaders is wrong. The ideal system would be like long-distance phone service with a small monthly fee and a charge for each download.

At this point, it seems like the RIAA is as much a threat to privacy as the FBI's internet activies. It's extremely hypocritcal for the RIAA to talk about property rights when it is willing to destroy anyone's PC or servers to save a few buck of their own. In the end, this heavy-handed effort will only backfire, because the worst offenders will move to the newer generation of peer to peer software that uses encryption and virtual private networks to keep the RIAA or ISPs from finding out what's going on. I personally don't download music because of the low resolution, but I certainly don't want anyone drafting draconian rules that define how and when I can listen to the music I already own.

Sell cd's at reasonable prices, and have user firendly dowloading services, and the problem goes away. Back in the late seventies, people were selling cassette dubs of albums, so nothing much has really changed. Turning your customer base into criminals isn't going to increase sales. Most of those downloads were never going to be purchased anyway.

What online access to vast quantities of "free" compressed audio files does is hardly dangerous to music, at least not good music. These libraries are sources of scarce, out-of-print material possessing a listenable sonic quality. No record executive is going to see a sales shift because of my search for vintage Mosolov material. The existance of vast P2P networks is a testament to the fact that great music isn't always available at the retail level.

Payment for services rendered is a fundamental pricipal behind a free-market economy. For situations where this does not happen, we have civil litigation and criminal prosecution as avenues for redress. The RIAA is showing that we are a free nation where individuals and groups of individuals have viable options for disputes and for redress of damages inflicted by other parties.

Hell no. I hope people stop buying CDs and increase file sharing and downloading. That is the only thing these assholes understand.

Stealing is wrong in what ever form it shows itself. Anything The RIAA does short of degrading audio quality for ligitimate purchasers is fine with me.

I don't know which is worse. The fact that they are stealing what doesn't belong to them, or that they see nothing wrong in what they are doing.

I don't think lawsuits are the answer. The tactic, if successful, will only serve to drive file traders toward encrypted virtual networks and other secure technologies. And even if the RIAA could stop all internet trading, they will still have the problem of the emerging WiFi, Bluetooth, and other networking technologies that allow people to trade files through private wireless networks.

The music indistry needs to take a cue from the film industry and copy protect its assets. People will bitch and moan and complain that the copy protection scheme has audible characteristics, but DVDs are copy protected and sales are up. Going after persons downloading files the industry failed to protect in the first place is an amusing farce that ignores the source of the problem.

Theft by any other name is still theft. Although the majority of downloading is of MP3 files (unlistenable), that doesn't change the fact that theft of intellectual property is theft.