wither in the light

It can't be done.

Encryption, trust-boundary/friend-of-a-friend networking, and almost total connectivity saturation ensure that, in some form or another, file trading will always exist. The only attempts that have come close to stopping file trading have been the draconian efforts of the Chinese government, and even they are losing the battle due to technologies like Freenet. The internet is the closest we've ever come to a truly democratic technology, and throughout history there have been concerted efforts on the part of the vested interests to fight such things: popes and politicians, kings and capitalists, they've always agreed that The People need to be prevented from communicating. If 'freedom of the press is for those who own one', it's just easier for them to smash the presses. This current legislation is a hamfisted attempt to do just that with today's technology.

Current copyright laws are ludicrous.

The RIAA/MPAA have bought a lot of politicians in their efforts to 'protect their copyrights'. As a result, some seriously defective copyright legislation is in place, including an indefinite extension of copyright that is preventing any work produced after 1923 from entering the public domain, which is the same as saying that it prevents those works from becoming a part of our culture. Most media companies have a huge backlog of currently-unpublished materials that they are just keeping to make sure no one else makes money off of it, even when they themselves have no intention of rereleasing any of it. This is a huge cultural loss... years from now, the only record of these days will be the one the marketers have decided on.

The idea that congress can legislate such things is unconstitutional, and they know it.

The constitution grants congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". They've already weaseled their way around the 'limited Times' part of that clause, granting themselves power to extend copyright indefinitely. Now, on that shaky legal ground, they are trying to build additional layers of legislation that will shore up their newfound unconstitutional powers. Once they have a body of laws in place that are predicated on the assumed legality of the tweaked copyright laws, the house of cards will be too fragile to disturb, and their campaign contributors will buy them all houses in Hawaii.

The punishment doesn't fit the crime.

The RIAA has managed to convince congress that anyone caught downloading a few songs caused them to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most of the 3,429 people against whom the RIAA has filed lawsuits have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars and a promise to never fileshare again, but this is mostly because not a single case has actually gone to trial. When they come at you with a lawsuit that says you are responsible for a quarter of a million dollars in damages, you'll settle fast... but the whole thing reeks of corporate hooliganism.

The profit margin for the media companies (*not* for the artists themselves, who are being more fucked by the media companies than they are by the file-sharing) is so large that file-sharing hardly dents it.

Every single study that has been done by non-industry researchers has shown that the overall effect file-sharing has on CD sales ranges from zero to positive. The media industry studies show the exact opposite, but their yearly profit reports put the lie to their own press releases.

Personally i just can't see any good in coming from punishing people for being music fans and making the effort to hear new music. I'm almost tempted to go onto kazaa and download some of my own music, just to see if the RIAA would sue me for having mp3's of my own songs on my hard-drive.