Face the Music

Ever one for flogging a horse carcass, the music industry has issued a royal decree that they will sue Yahoo! China. Talk about the kid with her thumb stuck in the dyke...

To say that Asia and the Middle East are hotbeds of entertainment piracy would be doing them a grave injustice; it's a national industry in many countries, both the wealthy and the poor. There are entire city blocks dedicated to pirated copies of movies and music in the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and many other countries. The music industry has as much chance of shutting down any significant portion of those operations as they do of forcing sunrise in the west. The electronic portion of this institutionalized piracy is an infinitesimally tiny tip of a planet-sized iceberg. Even if it were possible to shut it down completely, it'd have no noticeable impact on the worldwide piracy market.

If they were smart, (insert your own snarky observation here), the music cops would be busying themselves with finding a way to get a cut of the non-electronic illegal distribution of their wares. If you can't beat 'em, pick their pockets.