"In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act at the behest of the recording industry, which was worried that the Internet would spawn a zillion perfect copies of their songs, none of which artists would be paid for."

First of all, let's admit the truth: The RIAA lobbies on behalf of itself, not musicians. Businesses lobby about copyrights not in the name of "fairness" but to protect their assets. In fact, they lobby to change the copyright law so it violates its orginal intention and favors their "intellectual property monopoly" over the rights of the public domain. But I digress.

If record companies didn't jack the prices of CDs up so high, and give the artists such a tiny percentage of it, maybe consumers would be less cynical & less likely to steal. (See: Courtney Love on the RIAA.)

The Washington Post article closes on a really good point: "What is certain is that the record companies will have to develop a new -- and fairer -- business model for wringing money out of the Internet. . . The wild success of file-sharing and the decline of CD sales prove that people want a la carte entertainment -- not CDs with two good songs and 10 clunkers."

Yes! (Thanks for this idea Megnut.) Instead of driving to the store to buy an overpriced CD, or ordering online and waiting for delivery, why can't I pay a small price to download that one song that's been stuck in my head all day, or a dozen songs by different artists to make my own mix?

Bonuses for me: I don't have to buy a whole (overpriced) album if I just want one song; I get what I want, when I want it. I don't have to download music for free against the wishes of the artist. I don't want to do that now, but the recording industry doesn't offer me a lot of choices. (I learned how I felt by installing a popular P2P file-sharing client on my computer for one day, downloading some songs, realizing I just wasn't comfortable with it, and uninstalling the program. Interestingly, I liked some of the songs and plan to buy the CDs. The songs I didn't like I won't listen to again and will delete from my computer. Did the artists and I come out even?)

Bonuses for record companies: For the above two reasons, they're bound to make money.

Bonuses for artists: This method could also increase the profitability of less popular artists, who currently aren't worth the record company's time if they won't sell xxx,xxx albums, but might be more successful with "micropayments" for trial sizes.

Did you know that the publishing industry recently came out against links to Amazon, because Amazon offers used versions of books alongside new? What does that have to do with this? I don't know exactly, but there's something in there.

Well, that's my $8.02. What do y'all think?

(Thanks Andrew for sending the email that prompted my reply that gave birth to this post.)