Sony is in no way humbled by this. That's not how the machine works. Here's the bottom line, these issues only affect legitimate consumers, the pirates didn't miss a beat. People who make casual copies are not the problem, large counterfeiting factories in China/Russia and elsewhere are 95% of the problem by volume. But it's not economically feasible for the record companies to hold those people financially responsible. It is, however, very easy for them to squeeze consumers, so that's what they do. Read the Sony usage license, you don't even own the product you bought.

Here's the thing about the effects of this issue. Average music listeners do not give a rat's patootie about sonic quality anymore. They would *far* prefer a free MP3 at medium quality than a $1 MP3 at high quality. That is not going to change. So the entire debate of MP3 vs. CD is a complete non-issue for 98% of music listeners. The value of purchasing CDs for most consumers is not in the audio quality, it's in the convenience and tactile appeal. :D

that's exactly why it's a problem for sony. they have punished the good guy. everyone else that was ripping them off is still ripping them off. People that actually plunked down the money to buy a CD are punished. There is now a feeling that people think twice about purchasing a sony CD, I know I do. I even noticed that when I recently put a Sony DVD in my mac, it runs some kind of invisible script that is on the disc. this disables certain programs from running. How does this affect their bottom line positively?

Our emotional response and the stock market's response have no dramatic relationship. You'll see, check their stock this time next year and beyond. "Sony's bottom line" is not significantly affected here. Not even close.

I'm sure sony has something else up their sleeve. music probably doesn't even show up on the radar as far as income. But that's not why they own content. They use content to push equipment. Now if they set up their content in such a way that it effects their equipment, then that doesn't seem too wise. I think that what they are trying to do, is keep apple out the the PC music game. If apple succeeds in bridging the gap to the PC market, then Sony will loose out on a lot of income. If they can use their content to keep PC users from embracing AAC delivery, then Sony can launch their own compression format that will play on their players so they can sell more gear and get licensing fees from others. They have done this in the past with minidisc, SACD, Beta, etc...