[arubahounds]

There's nothing they can do about people ripping cd's and sharing them with friends, other than use copy protection techniques that can be cracked, but make it a little more difficult to do for the average music listener.

The RIAA isn't as worried about that because the average user isn't going to make that many copies. On the other hand one person can allow thousands of downloads from his PC without any effort at all on his part.

That's why they ought to be using a 2 pronged attack - make the free P2P's a pain in the a** and give people a legal alternative that works, i.e. an online source that has as big a selection as the P2P's, has a fair price and doesn't restrict what you do with the song once you've bought it.

Here's my fantasy of a system that would work:
1. Internet radio with an applet that has links to your online music store of choice. Whenever you hear a song you like, just click on the link to buy it.
2. Whenever you hear an artist you like, click on a link to the artist's catalogue of music and listen to low bit rate versions of their music, with links to buy a higher bit rate version of any song you like. Maybe offer discounts for purchasing more than 1 song at a time.

This would pretty much eliminate the need for "albums". Artists could just post songs as they produce them and add to their catalogue. Hopefully that would mean better quality music and eliminate the need for the filler crap that takes up so much space on CD's.