The RIAA will die.

The cause of death will be suicide. The RIAA will have to make an unlikely ally in the fight for survival, and this ally is file sharing.

With the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, file sharing has been made illegal, but how effective has this act been? Even after the act is imposed, more than a hundred million people are still downloading music from file sharing programs. The reason for this is simple. If a normal teenager is given a hundred dollars a month to pay for his phone bills, pay for movie tickets, buy or rent videogames or DVDs, go to sporting events, and buy a music CD, the music will most likely be a low priority. One hour long CDs are now priced about the same as a two and a half hour DVD with special features and extra scenes. Also, with the fast pace of music these days, a good half of the CD will be outdated in a couple weeks. It is more likely that the consumer will buy the DVD. There is far too much competition in other areas of entertainment and the music industry is losing the race. The RIAA should accept this and view the technology as an opportunity rather than an opponent.

The common argument against file sharing is the analogy between downloading music and stealing from a store, but this comparison is unfair. In many ways, file sharing is advertising. If a person tunes into the middle of a song on the radio, he/she can just run to the computer and download the full song through a file sharing program. If the person likes the song, he/she now has the ability to transfer it to other people or burn it on a CD or try and sample other songs by the artist. This is the power of digital information and the RIAA should harness the advertising power instead of fighting it.

The other question many people ask is "why will someone pay for something they can get for free?" With all of the controversy, the answer is surprising. People have been paying for free things for many years. The perfect example of this is the bottled water industry. Although there is perfectly healthy tap water, many people buy bottled water at a dollar a bottle. Bottled water has been marketed as "pure" and "nutricious" and this is why many people buy it. Similarly, many people buy CDs because of the sheer pleasure of owning the CD. Another idea would be for CDs to be packaged with a special one-time-use code that could be entered online for prizes or special features.

File sharing has not died yet. It has a large following and an amazing potential , but the RIAA just does not harness this potential. Instead, they fight this new idea in the hopes of retaining the old business model. Music lovers will always find a way to escape the laws or copy-protections that the RIAA tries to use. The consumer has no reason to stop downloading music until the music industry can find a legitimate alternative.