This is a piece I wrote that just ran this week on KCRW.

The big end of the year news report on the record business is - the  
song remains the same.  The RIAA, or Recording Industry of America has  
finally agreed to abandon its strategy of suing fans that illegally  
download or share music.  They have a Plan B.  Plan B is getting the  
Internet Service Providers, or ISPs to enforce their rights.

After 5 years of meteoric declines in revenue, with thousands of  
employees affected in all areas of the record businesses, the  
industry’s big shift in strategy is to go from filing lawsuits against  
downloaders, to filing objections with ISPs, who then are supposed to  
file grievances with the consumer. Sounds like the record industry has  
just created a new bureaucracy and the attorneys who run the RIAA  
bought themselves another 5 years of job security.

Are we really moving the ball forward here?