I was perusing the Internet and came across this article. It discusses how Canadian law actually laws Napster like file sharing. Thus while the RIAA is suing large filesharers in the US, they have no power to do so in Canada. From a practical standpoint, this makes copyright enforcement for these materials extremely difficult since files shared from Canada are legal.
I am not suggesting that filesharing should be unilaterally allowed as copyright holders are clearly damaged by its existence. The problem is that it really is difficult to realistically enforce these rules.
IMO, the real problem is the recording industry. They are spending too much time and money pursuing litigious solutions when they really should be focused on building online services that work. Current industry supported filesharing solutions offer incomplete music libraries and with questionable ownership terms of downloaded content.
I believe that if the industry came up with a truly compelling product that filesharing volumes would decline dramatically. Imagine a service where you could get access to all the music every published for $20/month. Would you pay for that? I would.
The trouble is, I don’t think that the industry is prepared to put together a plan as suggested. They are saddled with old distribution and royalty models. Until they realize that the business has changed and update their business model, they will be forced to contend with a strong filesharing public.