My guess is that... nevermind, I can't type that with a straight face....

So, as a theory, let's assume that even IF the RIAA wasn't threatened by the concept and saw that it was good business sense. They'd still be obligated to uphold laws that protect themselves. As far as I know, it's against the law to do what this record store is promoting. And if the RIAA allows it to happen, they may have trouble upholding other parts of the law if someone ever made a claim that violating one part of the law may be a good business move for the RIAA.

In a similar case (ripe with differences), when I worked for Rollerblad back in 91-94, we faught against anyone referring to inline skating as "rollerblading". We didn't want to fall the way of Q-Tip and Kleenex and lose our TradeMark. So, whenever we were being interviewed, we had to correct anyone who referred to inline skating as "rollerblading". Once we started letting them do it, we could lose our trademark.

I'm tossing this out there as a "what if" more than anything else.

The industry could have made a killing on Napster (just like they did on CDs after they were initially against it) but instead got the world into the habit of downloading music for free. I would have paid $20 a month for Napster back in 2000. Now the idea seems like a waste of cash to me.