First of all ... the people behind this really do not have much of an understanding of how computers (or people) actually work, or how difficult if not impossible, this would be to implement. What we have here are a bunch of media execs with clueless pipe dreams.
This has been tried before...
The RIAA certainly has not been on a winning streak lately. Hard to think of a more reviled public face of industry.
Incompetence breeds its own rewards :D
There are as many or more studies out there that say download INCREASES sales. Guess whichever tickles the senator's ears.
I expect the availability and pricing issues in Australia are similar to here in Canada. We have Netflix that costs the same as in the USA but it pales in comparison to the...
Sure Sony makes nice stuff, but perhaps if they had not pissed so many consumers off with their self righteous root-kits and customer-unfriendly service, things might have been different.
FOr me I stopped supporting Sony in hardware or media right after the root-kit fiasco. While that may not the main reason for most, it was for me.:mad: