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Good businesses will stay in business period. M$ operating systems and software are unarguably the most pirated products on the face of the planet yet they are the richest and most profitable company in the world. Why? Because they run a good business and generate demand for their products. If the RIAA wants to rally the wagons and try to stop the progression of technology to the level of the 80's, then they deserve whatever they get. Remember, the idea if intellectual properties is a compromise between the people and businesses; the people will grant the businesses the exclusive rights to a particular work in return for future inovations. The RIAA has found it easier to twist the law in their favor rather than meet consumer demand which dictates small, versatile, and portable listening. If their business methods suck, they have no rights to create laws to protect their flawed business strategies.
Lastly, for pete's sake this is America, land of the free. Whenever it gets to the point of a police state and we need Fritz and his clones on every corner to dictate to us exactly how to live our lives and throw us in the gulags when we make the slightest mistake, we might as well live in a oligarchy. I thought one of the reasons we fougth the revolutionary war was to keep the government and it's soldiers out of our homes....

But part of good business is limiting theft. All companies know they have to put up with, but all companies also know that if they roll over for it they're doomed.

Actually IP is a compromise between the creator and the consumer. It's about sharing the creation but making sure that the sharing always gives credit/ payment to the creator. Businesses are just the middle man that get a percentage off the top for taking the risk to mass produce the goods so that they can be shared more quickly. Unfortunately the way contracts have been getting written the publisher has snagged a lot of the ownership that was originally intended for the creator. It's one of the reasons so many successful bands start their own label, the get the proper level of ownership then and force the distributing company back to the level it belongs.

Hey I've said over and over on this thread that I don't like Fritz. But unlike everybody else that's against Fritz my eyes are open enough to know that Fritz is trying to fix a legitimate problem. It's a terrible solution, but you can't just blow off the problem because the only solution on the table sucks. All this record company-less distribution stuff is pie in the sky and completely unrealistic (if it wasn't there'd be somebody making it work right now). The way music distribution works and has worked for a long time the album is the add for the tour. If you don't have somebody with deep pockets pushing the album out the door you're not going to have a profitable tour. Certain groups, largely ones that have been around for a while, especially those that have developed a bit of a cult can short circuit this, but they're rare and don't provide a workable model for the whole industry.