I don't think there's anyway to stop music piracy. In Dr. Miyazaki's blog, he writes about the "old days" where there were shady vendors selling CDs on the street. Well this continues on today. Go to any large city in the United States and you can find black market CDs, DVDs, etc. The simple fact is whether it's vendors on the street or someone stealing music on the internet, it can't be contained. Even if it were possible to monitor everyone on the internet to see who is sharing files, it would be far to costly. And frankly, there are way more important things law enforcement agencies need to be working on than a college student downloading some music. Also, even if you stopped say, people in the United States from downloading files, what about all the people in Europe, Brazil, India, China, etc. that can download the files just as easily?
I do feel for the musicians who are losing out on money because if people stealing their music. This article from USA Today explains how Eminem's most recent album, which was the #1 selling album of 2010, sold less than half of what his previous #1 album sold in 2002. It's got to be frustrating for them but unfortunately, it is what it is. Like I said before, it can't be contained. However, I think there are some positive effects of file sharing on music. The music is obviously promoted in a highly efficient way and reaches a much larger audience than it did 15 or 20 years ago. The outcome of this (hopefully) would be an increase in ticket sales to concerts, which is really where the musician makes most of his or her money anyway.
I do not believe legislation will be able to keep up with technology. The people creating software to get around current legislation are always one step ahead of those passing legislation to stop new technologies. I think legislation will be able to walk the line between violating basic U.S. freedoms, however even if they do, what about the rest of the world?
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