It is also interesting to note that Fraunhofer, the german company who holds several mp3 patents, removed the provisions from their licensing agreements that provided for "free-use" under specific scenarios. I know attention was directed to Ogg Vorbis b/c of this, but I'm not sure OV is safe either (as a format/specification).

On topic, I agree with previous posters. This is a loosing struggle for media moguls and it is actually quite sad. Rather than puking their money into fighting piracy, which is akin to chomping off tree branches, they might be better served to invest in competiting technologies that rivaled ease of use/quality/content delivery etc. of the current mp3 technologies. Such a strategem would be akin to hacking at the root of the issue and infinitely more effective imho.

hacking pun not intended

Cheers,
<0