I realize lots of folks have been predicting the imminent demise of the RIAA and the music industry since the inception of Napster and yet both are still here and still treating legitimate customers as criminals - or at least as potential criminals. Sure individuals have tried to fight the RIAA’s questionable lawsuits and SWAT like tactics but there has yet to be a smack down of any substance to put them in their place.
The clear answer to the question, though, is yes. Somehow, a couple bits of news have gone without much notice in 2007 that have to me signaled that the end is near for the music gestapo.
In late November, EMI, in an attempt to figure out ways to save money so that they could return their company to profitability, announced that they'd be "substantially cutting their funding to industry's trade bodies."
A couple days after EMI announced their disappointing financial results for the year, Warner Music Group announced that they made less than half the amount of money that Radiohead did for the year. The cause? A significant portion of the proceeds from artist creativity went directly to suing the customers by way of contributions to the RIAA. A couple days before the disappointing financial results were announced, WMG CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. finally came to the realization that it was a mistake to go to war with the consumers, and publicly said so.
I'm sure if you've turned on a news channel in the last couple of weeks, you heard of the baby getting sued by Prince (the baby danced on YouTube to one of his songs). Despite the fact that suing baby's is an age-bracket the RIAA hasn't even targeted yet, this was even was defensible by the online Prince fans; you just don't put up music belonging to an artist free for download, regardless of whether your cute baby is dancing to it or not.
All the Prince fans are now united - not in support of the artist, but against him. Three sites, housequake.com, princefans.com, and prince.org have banded together give Prince the symbol formerly known as the finger, as he goes around sending cease and desist letters as well as lawsuit threats.
All this adds up to one thing for me: the death of the RIAA is near. Time and time again the industry has shown they have no clue as to how to properly adapt to the digital landscape, and musical acts like Radiohead, Trent Reznor and Madonna have all realized great success selling their music without the aid of a major label.