Decrease in P2P network traffic, are the RIAA's actions working?

After three years of paralysis, the music industry's get-tough-on-consumers offensive is only the start of what promises to be a long war. As RIAA president, Cary Sherman, said, the association plans "at least several hundred lawsuits to start, but that's only the beginning".

But critics of the initiative warn that the offensive will ultimately be as self-defeating as the battle against Napster. The industry's apparent rationale - that going after P2P users will drive consumers to legitimate services such as Apple's iTunes - is no more likely to succeed, they say, because file-swappers (there are an estimated 57 million in the US alone) will gravitate to other services.

Alternatives to the big P2P services such as KaZaA and Grokster have already sprung up. EarthStation5, for example, offers anonymising techniques. Other services, like Nullsoft's Waste, serve only small communities.

Clearly, consumers are willing to shop around to avoid the authorities. Blubster 2.5 , a service with improved privacy, has been downloaded more than 3.3 million times since June 17.

"RIAA will have a much harder time penetrating these systems, and if their actions result in internet users flocking towards them, they will probably regret overplaying their hand rather than trying to find a way to work with peer-to-peer networks to market and sell music," says James Plummer, a policy analyst for Consumer Alert in Washington.