<P>You don't get what you used to get when you 'bought' a CD. The value of CDs (vids, ebooks) have diminished from what you used to get. This is a change, and I believe in "Le Chatelier's Law as Applied to Systems": The system pushes back. (Aside: This "law" is discussed in John Gall's excellent book 'Systemantics'.)
<P>Econ 101 says there is a relationship between money expended and value received and that is called the 'elasticity' of the product. A perfectly elastic product's sales will vary with price (or value per money expended). Decrease the value received and down go the sales. OTOH an inelastic product's sales don't vary with value. Content producers have decided their product is -inelastic-, therefore they'll sell the same amount regardless of value received. And it appears, so far, that they're right. I imagine few people refuse to purchase CDs today because of changes to the value received. How many more controls will go on before people begin to resent them?
<P>The point of DMCA, SSSCA, and the hardware changes Xugumad discusses is to keep the value of content down. Therefore, someone willing to distribute content whose value is -greater- than what you get with all these controls has an opportunity to win a lot of a market.
<P>Nothing says the RIAA controls -every bit- of content. It only controls the particular bits of content 'owned' by its members. I am perfectly free, for example, to publish a CD of me singing to my girlfriend's dog without any RIAAesque controls. (Duffy likes my song but he won't pay for the CD, and if you're smart you won't either.) But decent content is still perfectly salable without any controls.
<P>Does this suggest anything to you? It suggests the following to me: instead of climbing on the rights-management pay-to-play treadmill, people will search for alternatives. It suggests that samizdat publishing, without DRM, is going to be big. Artists, except for a few Very Big Names, have little to lose from leaving content controls the way they were in 1982. So what we'll have, shortly I imagine, is two kinds of music available: one kind, available at norightsatall.com, will have DRM built in. The other, available at some Napster-like site, won't have DRM. Guess which the kids will be listening to?
<P>The RIAA is asking for too much, and I am betting they won't get it. What's more, once people find out the depth of the scam, there will probably be an enormous backlash. People don't like having 'their rights' (whether they are legal rights or only perceived rights resting on tradition) abused or removed.