The great internet wars of 2010

I hope, it won´t come to that. After more than a decade of turbulent innovations, the measures of brick-and-mortar or analog business models are constantly beefing up. Torrents of legal actions against normal people block justice systems in most of the western countries and pile up further costs.
Fans get sued or receive harsh take-down notices for posting their favorite songs, publishing fan-videos with background music.
With modern technologies, broadband access, digital omnipresence and an always-on mentality, it's a sometimes just a mouseclick's distance between a secured computer with totally legal mp3 files or a filesharing hub.
Yes, copyright does exist. Yes, record companies built a complete industry on the premise of having a good - the license - to sell.
But if they stay on a course of actually fighting their potential customers - an exponentially growing number - this will deepen the perceived gap. The concept of not owning a record, but only a license, of being restricted by artificial region codes is hard to grasp.
Fighting, suing and insulting your customers seems like a bad idea. And on the internets, the competitor is just a click away. Even the economy of scale will widen the distance between enforcing these licenses and breaking them.
And this war is a big waste of time. Time, better spend on improving an industry founded on creativity, art and out-of-the-box thinking.
Let's see, if Douglas Merrill, one of several technical directors at google, will make a dent. He's becoming a president of digital at EMI Music.
This struggle won't be a problem of a lack of technological innovations or availability. All that's needed is a cunning business plan, it's bold execution and the willingness to innovate.