The big news in the recording industry's results today are not the growth of digital sales, or the continued fall in CD sales.

It is that the industry has become addicted to lawyers in order to maintain its business model. And those lawyers will bleed the industry dry long before pirates can.

Here is the money quote from John Kennedy (no relation), who chairs the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI):

"Without the legal crackdown, it would be a different situation. You certainly have to have the legal services to make it all work."

In other words the industry assumes that without the terror of lawyers its current success would be unsustainable.

Which is precisely why it is unsustainable.

Markets cannot work under coercion. The decision to purchase a good must be a free choice, or else you don't have a market.

The admission by Kennedy that coercion is at the heart of his industry's success is proof positive that the current model cannot survive for very long.

The question is what will replace it.

This was the question before the Copyright Wars began. It remains the question.

That's the story no one is telling.