Hollywood???s best box office yearsever were 2009 and 2010. Net revenue from book sales was up 5.6percent in 2010 from 2008. And sales of e-books, in particular,grew 1,274 percent in those two years.

In the music industry, while the decline in sales ofphysical recorded music continued, the global performance-rightsmarket share increased an impressive 13 percent in 2010 over2009. Even musical instrument sales increased 8 percent over2009.

I note in the debacle surrounding SOPA, rights holders are saying, “Well, maybe SOPA isn’t the way to solve the problem, help us find a better way.” Which sounds pretty reasonable. But as the figures quoted above show, the problem doesn’t exist to be solved. Sure, people are infringing, but rights holders aren’t suffering.

They certainly are not suffering enough to be given State power of coercion to attempt to achieve what only the most despotic and tyrannical regimes on the Planet can.