Mickey,
In my opinion it is not as great deal as RIAA and the publishers makes it sound like.
It's actually quite amusing that pirating of songs is far higher hyped against than theft of private property.
If anything, resources and money should be rather used to investigate actual crimes, which causes FAR more losses than a kiddie or poor arse student copying MP3 off the net.
The current actions by RIAA and the publishers probably makes more bad than good (well, good for the publishers, but overall.. not), since overall, if they get even more serious like they seem to be, it alienates the potential customer base even further.
In theory, with a great PR and marketing, they could probably make more profit with less spendings, than this top wanted song pirate campaign does
However, I suspect alot of those who runs the publishers, share owners and RIAA, are fairly old people, whos for the internet and computer isn't quite as familiar.
You know.. unknown things can cause fear and fear is easily manipulated?
I'm afraid the greed ones are manipulating the fearing part of people to support them, which often are the most powerful ones of a nation. (for older people, internet and computers aren't so familiar as to younger people and I'm sure you'll know which part of the population is running the goverment, laws, industry etc.)
For the greed ones, this gives them welcome respect and money, more so than thinking of the best for the whole industry.
Those ain't any santa claus guys up on the top of these things and theres only a few people who actually runs the show.
The others are just supporters, who preaches the same thing.
Got to love the capitalism, eh?
If it wouldn't be the greed driving the matter, then there could be far more noise over the actual criminal acts.
but is there alot of cash offered to you if you drive an organization with ever growing plans to prevent crime? no.
What comes to fear, there are many kinds of fears, but theres always one common thing with fear - whatever fear it is, it can be used to manipulate the person and if there are more than one person with same kind of fears, you can manipulate the people.
This has been applied in the politics for as long as the history has been written and beyond.
In the business, different kind of fear is manipulated, than with the wars.