While the RIAA goes head-to-head with Napster, Random House sues a startup e-publisher over the rights to some of its titles, and eBay tries to get heavy on those trading pirated wares through its auction site -- one can't help but wonder if it's time for an entirely new model to cope with IP in a digital world.

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Just how do you stop people from copying and swapping music, books or other information easily reproduced in digital form?

You can take the RIAA approach of endless litigation -- but what does that achieve?

As one Aardvark reader said to me yesterday -- "they can't put everyone in jail."

Then there's copy-protection -- the art of making your IP so difficult to copy that it becomes a pig to use even when you have a right to do so. To see how futile this approach is you only have to look at how many computer game vendors have spent a small fortune trying to copy-protect their works in the past -- only to have cracked versions available within a week or so of each new release hitting the shelves.

I'm very much afraid that the chicken is out of the egg and there's no way to put it back in. No matter how hard the RIAA or anyone else wants to stop the illegal swapping of their IP, they won't be able to. It is now a fact of life that they'll just have to adapt.

So what's going to happen? Will the RIAA continue to spend millions trying to catch and prosecute university students who get their music for free from others by way of the Internet? Where will the money for all these expensive law suits come from -- higher CD prices of course! And what will higher CD prices do -- encourage more people to pirate the music of course!

I think the time has come for IP owners to realise that the 20th-century concept of unit-sales of their products is dying. It's no longer a viable business model and publishers, recording companies and others now have no option but to switch to a model more aligned with the digital media -- and quickly!

Ultimately I suspect the smorgasboard subscription model will prevail.

Just as you pay $x per month to watch as much Sky TV as you want -- pretty soon you will be able to pay $x per month to download all the music and books you want.

Each recording artist, writer or whatever will receive a share of the total subscription pool based on the number of times their work is downloaded.

The benefits are manifold -- you and I get our music and literature at a far more reasonable price. The recording artists and writers continue to get paid for their work. The recording companies and publishers have the chance to slash their overheads and introduce a more efficient model.

Of course there are two flies in this ointment:

Firstly, I doubt that the recording companies and publishers are really willing to change from a model that has produced massive profits and huge levels of control. They'll keep clinging to the past and boosting the pool of corporate lawyers for a few years yet in a vain attempt to hang on to the past.

Secondly, there are some people who will continue to pirate IP rather than pay for it -- even if they're only going to be saving $1 per album or book.

However, the publishers and recording companies will have to move into the 21st century or someone else will come along and steal their markets from them -- and fortunately a huge percentage of people are still basically honest and, once the price gouging is over, would rather acquire their music and literature in an honest fashion than steal it.

So, in a year or two's time, online e-libraries where you pay a monthly subscription to download books and CDs may be the norm and we'll all be a lot better off because of it.

Note: I already use an e-library for some technical books and it has probably saved me nearly a thousand dollars in the past 12 months because I no longer have to invest in dead trees and ink.

As always, your feedback is welcomed.

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