Alternately, the RIAA, MPAA, and **AA, will take over, buy the elections, and we'll all be slaves to the managers that control the creative class.
We have the internet now. Free speech is file sharing. As long as we can keep that the **AA can never control us.
And the market is full of very good competitors.
Find me a good smart phone with a two day battery life. How about one with a real lens on it's camera. Just because a lot of companies are trying to produce the same phone doesn't mean the market is full. It more likely means that huge companies won't take risk and just want to chase the most secure revenue stream.
You can (economically) prove the system is broken just from that. Demand goes down and supply goes up while prices go up. A person sufficiently cynical would argue they are keeping CD prices artificially high (and restricting authorized online availability) to push people to illegal downloads to then go out and make all that illegal, when dropping the price on CDs to $5 or $10 each for everything would greatly increase profits and revenues.
You could also argue that people that will pirate have already been priced out. If your're making 80k the difference between free, 12 and 20 isn't that big. However if you're making 25k the difference between free, 12, and 20 is huge. Mostly people are just paying for convenience and organization now. That's why iTunes has been such a success even though it competes directly with free.
Things are "wrong" because the majority of people think they're "wrong".
Democracy is great and all but it doesn't define what is "wrong".There are many examples of tyranny of the majority where a majority group passes laws that hurt a minority group often for no reason.
I'm going to go out on a limb here an say that an action is "wrong" because it harms someone else. So if an action is harming another party than we can try to pass a law to make it illegal.
In the case of piracy the musician is clearly harmed monetarily but agreeing on what to do about it is much harder. I don't think you should be able to mangle my property(drm) because I could steal your music.
If it wasn't so hit and miss with basic survival right now, I might see it a bit differently.
Looks like we're doing pretty good.
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. -- Frank Hubbard