I think the solution to this is: buy it off amazon! Got Dance of Death (the new Iron Maiden album) for £8.50, when it's £12 in the shops! I personally don't download music (can't say the same about everything, though...), 'cos 1: I prefer to support artists that I like by buying their records, and 2: I hate listening to music on a computer anyway - sounds much better pumped through a proper sound system...
As for the RIAA, though - **** 'em. I HATE big-ass corporations that are terrified of a shrinking profit margin, 'specially American ones. Anyway, their excuse for all this is that they have to protect their sales, which have fallen 30-odd percent in the last few years. Well, did you ever think whay this could be happening? Just possibly because the music industry is pumping out a huge pile of crap. Every single group or singer sounds exactly the bloody same, the songwriting and musicianship is practically non-existent (Busted, anyone?), and bands are being signed purely because they sound exactly like something else that has been popular recently (Good Charlotte is a case in point). If the record labels want to make some decent money, then they need to get some decent ****ing music to publish!