The Los Angeles Times recently published a nice piece on the (un)changing world of music downloading since last year's Supreme Court decision in Grokster. This is good advice from the Hollywood Cartels' hometown paper:

The Grokster ruling wasn't simply a nudge for companies like Grokster to get out of the file-sharing business. It was an invitation for the entertainment industry to get in. By clarifying the legal obligations of file-sharing companies, the Grokster ruling created a road map for partnerships between tech and entertainment companies.

So far, however, talks between leading file-sharing firms and entertainment conglomerates have yielded few tangible results. Labels and studios have warmed a bit to popular but bootleg-heavy sites such as YouTube.com, where users post most of the videos, yet they remain extremely cautious about letting users redistribute their works.

The industry needs much more experimentation with approaches that give users the control and freedom to consume that make file-sharing networks so attractive. Instead of hoping that millions of Internet users on file-sharing networks will go somewhere else and pay for their downloads, it's past time to try to do business with them where they are.