RIAA:Lawsuits::U.S.A.: ???

Lawrence Lessig has once again hit the nail right on the head. He has a brilliant new piece up on Wired discussing the futility of the United States’ present course of self-righteous international policy. Amazingly enough, he ties it to another subject near-and-dear to my heart: The music industry’s doomed battle against peer-to-peer file sharing.

I have been saying for over two years now that the solution to terrorism is to stop giving people reasons to resort to the desperate act of terrorism. I have also been saying that the music industry cannot win against the unstoppable forward march of technology. I had gleefully predicted the doom of the record industry as we know it, despite their silly attempts to stop it. I had always known their current actions were just the throws of death. So now that I see that the two are analogous, it seems to me our war on terrorism is a similar struggle against unstoppable forces, and that’s really scary. I’ve thought for a long time that our culture would collapse on itself before any violence erupted, but I suppose it could work the other way around.

It’s not so funny when you’re not talking about compact discs anymore.