For the recording industry the case seems clear. Music sales are down for the third straight year. CD sales are now almost 20% lower than in 2000. Despite their successful campaign against Napster two years ago, online music sharing through peer-to-peer service such as KaZaA and Gnutella continues to flourish. To re-establish its pre-Napster margins, industry thinking goes, the record labels have to put an end to illegal music sharing over the Internet once and for all. Hence, the recent decision by the industry-leading Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to take the fight directly to file sharers, not merely to commercial file sharing services
