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Copyright Law and Enforcement"No Piracy" -
The Enforcers
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The RIAA has filed hundreds of lawsuits this past year against flagrant downloaders of "pirated" digital music, including high school and college students. At $50,000 for each violation of copyright, the lawsuits are getting people's attention. Lawsuit information can be found on the RIAA site. See RIAA's Anti-Piracy information site at http://www.riaa.com/issues/piracy/default.asp.

The software companies through their Business Software Alliance, BSA, also have a separate web site devoted to digital piracy, called "NoPiracy.Com".

Digital downloading, both legal and illegal, is revolutionizing the recording industry. "Bricks and mortar" outlets are going bankrupt right and left -- Tower Records is a notable local casualty, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, 2004.

Don't bet on the disappearance of the CD or record stores, however. After three years of declining sales, record sales increased in the first quarter of 2004.

U.S. album sales declined annually in the three years following 2000, the biggest year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking U.S. music sales.

In 2001, sales were down 3 percent. The next year, sales dropped 11 percent. Last year, until September, sales were down 8.5 percent, but the pickup in sales at the end of the year narrowed the total decline for 2003 to less than 4 percent.

The burgeoning online music market accounted for the sale of more than 25 million tracks between January and March, eclipsing the 19.2 million tracks purchased in the last six months of 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

See http://www.detnews.com/2004/business/0404/11/business-118504.htm:

As you might expect, enforcing the law through lawsuits is effective, but unpopular. There's a "Boycott RIAA" movement out there, but it probably "doesn't have legs."