"Illegal digital downloads disrupted everything, and cut profits substantially"
Only because a decade beforehand the RIAA decided that instead of working on ways to monetize the Internet, they would work on ways to make computers less useful for music distribution. Basically the recording industry's shortsightedness and failure to embrace the greatest communications revolution since the printing press led to everything else you described.
To put it another way, the RIAA could have pushed for Congress to set up a micropayments system for music downloading, before most people even knew about music downloading. Instead they lobbied for the DMCA and spent their money developing DRM schemes that failed before they were ever deployed. Their "bad karma" is a result of their response to the complete failure of those efforts: abuse of the legal system on a massive scale.
Only because a decade beforehand the RIAA decided that instead of working on ways to monetize the Internet, they would work on ways to make computers less useful for music distribution. Basically the recording industry's shortsightedness and failure to embrace the greatest communications revolution since the printing press led to everything else you described.
To put it another way, the RIAA could have pushed for Congress to set up a micropayments system for music downloading, before most people even knew about music downloading. Instead they lobbied for the DMCA and spent their money developing DRM schemes that failed before they were ever deployed. Their "bad karma" is a result of their response to the complete failure of those efforts: abuse of the legal system on a massive scale.