It looks like the Internet is going to kill or greatly shrink media companies. It is getting more and more difficult to rein in illegal copying. It gets easier and easier to copy stuff as technology drops in price. Also, many amateurs are happy to give away their works for free. Digital "rights management" (DRM) technology can only go so far. Pirates will make analog copies if they have to in order to get around DRM. Analog copies are nearly impossible to mark with DRM. The pirates will simply use incremental and/or trial-and-error selective scrambling or distortion to get around it.

It is perhaps sad to see, but just as globalization has resulted in BrainsAsaCheapCommodity, so too will change do to copying.

''Sad to see, assuming one believes that "DigitalRightsManagement" (as stated by the companies who have the most to gain from it) is a good thing in the first place.''