Hopefully, that if the court rules against the defendant
on the issue of ripping his licensed material to MPS3
on his computer it will place the nuance of intent of
use on the ruling so that the RIAA can't move against
everyone who puts CD tracks on their ipod or on MP3
CDs for use in their car.

In other words, what might make the ripping process illegal
was his doing so with intent to violate copyright by sharing
said copies.

That said, the record industry as we have known it is dead.
It'll go on for a few years, like an auto company that has so
much capital that it can flounder along for a decade or two before
it figures out that the world has passed it by.

Even DRM (Digital Rights Management) has seen its day---
major records company are starting to drop copy protection and
sell tracks which are unlocked; the consumer demands it--- he
wants to pay a dollar a song, and be able to play it back on
his IPod, his car, his computer at work and his Media Center
PC. At that rate, he's really not that motivated to engage in
piracy.

Oh, there will always be some, usually among people with more
time than money. But a lot of those are young people, who,
when they do have earning power, will become the music industry's
best customers.

In the Dec 2007 edition of Wired magazine, there's an interesting
article about Universal Media's CEO Doug Morris, and how he's coping
(or not) with the changes. Even he seems to realize that the
industry is going to change from providing a physical product (i.e.
vinyl and now CDs) to providing a service (i.e., download of
digital materials).

But while everyone, from the RIAA to our own Big Mick jump up and
down and try and define 'stealing,' the world moves forward. Even
the record companies.

The real question is whether anybody will need them any more.

In return for providing musicians what they couldn't provide
for themselves--- a way to produce and distribute materials,
record companies took ownership of the whole process from inception
the production and marketing. They made their money on the product.
And they could do so because they could control the distribution
channel. They really had control of the musicans' "air supply."

Now that they no longer control the distribution channel, and
control of the distribution channel is what all this legal posturing
is really all about, they no longer control the music.

Do the artists still need what the record companies offered? Sure.
They need to be promoted, they need a way to distribute product and
receive revenue. They need someone to invest a million dollars in a
tour when they don't themselves have a few hundred for next month's
rent. They need the networking that puts song-writers together with
song-singers. Absent the record companies, it isn't clear how all
that is going to happen.

To bring it back to the folk music world, what really gets me is
that so many folk musicians continue to try to deal with their
recorded music in a miniaturized model of the big record labels.
Only they've lacked---miserably ---the wide production and
distribution facilities that the big labels used to make their
money. Their studio production costs are a massive percentage
of the money they'll ever make on a recording; unlike the big
labels, where even the big studio and mastering costs are still
just a drop in the bucket of a multi-platinum revenue. Their
distribution process usually consists of some mail-order, boxes
of CDs they lug from gig to gig, and festival sale-tables which
rip off either the artists or buyers or both with insane markups,
then pay slowly or not at all.

There are some bright spots, such as CDBaby, which provides both
digital and physical distribution at very fair terms to artists
and which also allows (somewhat less lucrative but still effective)
access to artists' music via iTunes and the whole gamut of digital
media outlets.

I actually see future 'pop' acts coming up through channels
such as CDBaby and maybe just staying there. They'll find the
promotion and backing they need through a new breed of non-affiliated
promoters and through a new type of entertainment 'venture
capitalist.'