ARRRGH! Here's the rub! Stuff like this make me crazy. Hilary Rosen admits "This is an industry of advances, not royalties. A record company executive once said to me: 'If an artist of mine gets a royalty, I haven't done my job at negotiation time." If there are advances, it doesn't matter how stuff gets traded afterwards, the artist simply gets their advance directly from their audience before releasing work. As a matter of fact, widespread distribution now directly benefits the artist. Michael Lewis wrote about this in Next. If artists can get an advance directly from the audience, then royalities don't matter, the RIAA doesn't matter, digital rights management doesn't matter, and the people actually adding value (artists) get paid better than what they're getting now. Everything works.