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Where is “on the web”?

If your car is stolen, should you be arrested for putting your car where it might be stolen?

I'm not saying the downloaders aren't guilty. However, I would liken it to the WOD - sure, you can go after the kids buying bags of pot for personal use. You might even make a small dent in demand if you devote huge amounts of resources.

Problem with music, is that the demand for illegal downloads is essentially the same demand they're trying to market to. They can't risk killing demand, like the government tries to do when going after drug users.

Granted, many file sharing utilities default to sharing what is on your drive, as well as allowing downloads, but in every one I've seen, sharing is disable-able.

I may not understand the law, but if I own the rights to a tune that I have legally purchased, while it may be technically illegal to download an identical copy off the web, it certainly leaves room for argument since what I own the rights to use and what I am downloading are digitally identical.

In contrast, there is no question that providing content to others for free or for profit is illegal.

RIAA controls the legal source of supply, they should be concentrating on the supply side.

Plus, in any industry, if you tick off enough of your customers, you end up getting regulated. I think that should be the last thing the RIAA would want, considering how close they've come to having the government step in due to the content of what they're selling.

What they're doing is probably legal, but its bad business, IMHO.