I'm bumping this to the top. It's interesting to see the reaction.
I think you'll find that most just want a fair system. I don't want to pay, and pay, and pay. I don't want Congress writing hardware standards into law, the requirement that Macrovision scrambling is effective is Federal law for example.
Funny, when I became interested in music in a serious way, I could buy a cassette deck and record all my LPs. I could record from the local Public Radio station when they had 'Album' night. And I bought lots of LPs and lots of hardware. Anyone remember the SAE Click and Pop machine?
When I visit the US, I am way bored with FM radio, it is the same short playlist over and over. And frankly, the music on those playlists sucks. Yeah, I'm an old guy, but I have Eminem, NiN, The Specials, etc in my library. I like all sorts of GOOD music.
I think the main reason the entertainment industry's revenue is down is because they simply have not got enough material that people are willing to plunk down money for.
P2P can be argued 2 ways. I use it from time to time. But if I keep playing someone I will go buy a CD. Now, in China that doesn't mean much because the CD is probably a pirate copy. But I buy it nonetheless. Why use a terror campaign again Americans, force equipment to be degraded when you wink at 1.3 billion people with pirate CDs in the chain stores? Which is another topic entirely.
One scare tactic of the industry is to tell Congress (tech illiterates all), that people will be making perfect copies of their movies and sending them to everyone on the Internet. I know and you know that simply isn't going to happen. The files are large, the outbound bandwidth limited for most cable and DSL users. As for DVD rips, yeah, you can do them. But the quality is not 'original' and the Divx reencodes are not useful on a large screen.
There have been a number of attempts to provide 'on demand' movies. Nobody (AT&T, Charter, Southern Bell) has been able to make it work technically. So why cripple HDTV, and all associated equipment?
Even the cable companies are getting their licks in. They will scramble the basic channels soon. Why? I have no idea, if you have a basic cable package, you have the channels. If you have a premium package you still have basic (local) channels. Why scramble them? For HDTV they already have the broadcast flag set by the station/studio. All I can see it will do is make 'Cable ready' sets useless. And a lot of people have paid for that capability. Especially when you are talking HDTV, the tuner is definately extra cost.
Sooner or later they will force something on to the public that will attract the attention of Joe Public and not just techies. Then the situation will change. Even politicians aren't stupid enough to ignore Joe when he gets upset.
But for now I see it as an arrogant industry that has too much power in Congress breaking and downgrading equipment, trampling rights like fair use, and generally acting like a horse's ass. And hopefully it will come back to bite them one day soon.