Re: The same mistakes, or different ones, lead to a similar outcome

'Incidentally, there is and was no strategy that the music industry could have implemented that would have prevented the situation they are now in' : this is NOT true. There is a way to make money from music, films, and books and still offer it for free. It's called providing value-added services on top of the free offerings.

This is NOT a theory. I live in France and here we have a station that provides for free (as long as you pay your broadband access subscription to your provider - not the station) web series such as Noob (http://noob-tv.com/accueil_prod.html) and Flander's Company (http://www.info-graphik.com/flanders/). You can also find these series on the web and watch them for free. Absolutely free. Yet the groups who produce these series make money. How? They sell DVDs of the series - yes, people buy them and I certainly do. They sell bandes dessinées (graphic novels), mugs, t-shirts, and, in the case of Noob, a compilation of music used in the series and novels. They have made enough money to keep going for some years now: Flander's Company is working on producing season 5 and Noob is in the middle of showing season 4.

In addition, the station that shows these series, Nolife (http://www.nolife-tv.com/), finances itself from subscriptions. That's right: although people can get it without having to subscribe to it itself (just their service provider), they still pay to keep it going. It has been going for some years now.

As well, some web comics also use this model. I am thinking specifically of Dave Kellett's comic, Sheldon (http://www.sheldoncomics.com/). Access to the comic is free, but that doesn't stop people from buying his collection book, t-shirts, and posters.

The big corporations whether they are in the music, film, or publishing industry, are just lazy. They don't want to do the extra work it would take to make money while providing free access. They are so lazy, in fact, that they want to use force to prop up their business model. This is pure, outright thuggish behaviour. Copyright should be severely limited. If companies want our money, they should have to work for it. If individual authors want our money, they should have to work as well.