In the last week, there was a symbolic event that the music industry won the first court case against piracy. Reportedly, of the more than 26,000 lawsuits that record labels have filed against alleged pirates since 2003, this case was the first to actually be tried before a jury. And also this shows that simply making the songs available, not an actual transfer of a digital-music file was a copyright violation.
I think it would make meaningful impact on customers' behaviour, combined with new ideas like selling some songs on iTunes and Amazon.com without copy protection or offering free music to people willing to watch ads. That is, we could expect that more users are willing to get out of black market and join the paid one. Of course, the piracy would never go away and these lawsuits might make people angry, but people would tend to think twice about downloading illegal music and turn to legitimate music of innovative service providers with greater user experience. If so, who will be the winner? A la carte download without DRM protection like iTunes or all-you-can-eat subscription service like Rhapsody or ad-supported free music like SpiralFrog.com?
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