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The ailing music industry got a rare piece of good news on Feb. 25. On that date, Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Ga., downloaded the 10 billionth song from Apple's iTunes Store.

The 71-year-old retired real-estate broker's lucky download -- which won him $10,000 and considerable publicity -- was "Guess Things Happen That Way" by Johnny Cash.

The industry and its copyright-enforcement and lobbying arm -- The Recording Industry Association of America ---- trumpeted the success of legal, paid downloading sites such as iTunes, eMusic and Amazon while heralding the inroads that have been made against what they call "online piracy."

But don't break out the champagne just yet.

What they aren't telling you is that illegal downloads still outnumber legal ones by about 19 to 1. According to statistics released last year by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), roughly 95 percent of all music downloads infringe on copyrights. Moreover, the IFPI's Digital Music Report 2010 claims that global music sales have declined by 30 percent since 2004 due to digital piracy.

Musicians and record labels contend that consumers have grown comfortable with what amounts to stealing. As a result, they say, musical careers and the music business itself are in peril. Others counter that the overly greedy corporate music industry is getting what it deserves.

Meanwhile, millions of music fans continue to plunder the Internet for free downloads from peer-to-peer websites, heedless of the financial consequences, legal violations and ethical implications.

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It all started back in the 1980s. The conversion of music from analog to digital formats, beginning with the commercial introduction of the compact disc in the United States in 1983, changed everything.

As technology progressed, people discovered they could easily and cheaply burn copies of compact discs for friends. Further technological leaps, including the spread of the mp3 format on the Internet in 1994, the invention of the Winamp audio player in 1997 and the introduction of Napster in 1999, permitted fast, easy peer-to-peer file sharing on the Internet.

At its peak in February 2001, Napster had 26.4 million users. Other peer-to-peer services, including Kazaa, LimeWire, Gnutella and BitTorrent, proliferated. The music industry grew increasingly alarmed by its online losses, which the RIAA attributed to "digital music piracy."

The RIAA represents companies that "create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85 percent of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States." On their website, they cite an analysis that concludes, "Global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year; 71,060 U.S. jobs lost; a loss of $2.7 billion in workers' earnings; and a loss of $421 million in tax revenues."

While monetary losses from file-sharing have indeed been substantial, the industry's reading of its economic woes ignore the fact that inflated retail prices for CDs have contributed in large part to falling sales. The gulf between the cost of music in stores and online (up to $20 per CD, including tax) vs. file-sharing (free!) creates a compelling incentive to employ the latter option.

For instance, why should "Led Zeppelin II," which bore a list price of $4.98 when released in 1969, fetch almost four times that amount ($18.98) as a cheaply mass-produced CD 40 years later? It's an old piece of music. Some may argue that Led Zeppelin and Atlantic Records have already made enough money from those nine songs and should at least discount them steeply in the digital era.

Copyrights eventually expire, at which point a piece of music enters the Public Domain (P.D.) -- meaning, among other things, that downloads are legally free.

Copyright law, however, is complex and subject to federal revision. Currently, in the U.S., a composition's copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author (if published in 1978 or later) and 95 years after publication (if published prior to 1978).

The copyright on a sound recording is a different matter. That copyright survives "until the death of the last surviving author" -- with "author" in this case meaning any member of the band or entity to which it is credited. Even a producer is considered an author.

To further complicate matters, federal copyright protection applies only to sound recordings made after Feb. 15, 1972. Recordings made before that date are not protected by federal law -- only by state laws, whatever those might be.

Shouldn't the pricing of CDs and song downloads recognize that copyrights lose value over time, especially in popular music, where timeliness is important to the audience?

In other words, wouldn't the companies who market older music actually make more money by lowering prices and therefore triggering more paid downloads (not to mention CD sales) as a result?

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By the same token, there's no question that many among the generation that came of age during the Internet's rise believe everything is or ought to be free. This opportunistic mindset ascribes little intrinsic value to other people's creative works or moral obligation to pay for them.

Every song, article, book, movie and game exists in a virtual online candy shop with no locks on the doors.

I've heard people boast of downloading, at no cost, the entire Beatles catalog and every tune listed in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time." One college student admitted he'd never paid a penny for music in his life, yet his iPod was full.

Gene Simmons of KISS had this to say in "USA Today": "I don't believe in socialism, and the last time I checked, what we do isn't charity. ... These freckle-faced college kids have destroyed an entire industry by stealing."

The "everything's free" mentality inevitably led to a showdown between the RIAA, as the primary agent of the music industry, and musical freeloaders. The RIAA initiated its first copyright-infringement lawsuits against individuals in 2003. They continued through 2008, at which point the organization changed strategy and enlisted Internet Service Providers as online watchdogs and enforcers.

However, by that point the RIAA had filed well-publicized rounds of lawsuits against 35,000 ordinary people. Many of its random targets were forced to settle for amounts ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 or risk going to court, where judgments reached into the hundreds of thousands.

The ultimate goal of the suits was to deter illegal file-sharing by scaring the public into compliance, but the RIAA's campaign turned into a public-relations disaster. Defendants included a 13-year-old girl, a dead person, a teenager with pancreatic cancer, a homeless man, and senior citizens who had no clue what the grandkids had been doing on their computers.

Wanting to discuss its issues and strategies, I called the RIAA's office in Washington, D.C., to request an interview, but I was told, "There is no one to speak to. We've put up all the information we have to offer on the website."

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For some perspective, I turned to Don Dixon, a veteran recording artist and producer. While he philosophically supports the RIAA's efforts to enforce musical copyrights, he regrets their methods.

"The RIAA comes off like a bully with its tactics, even though they are in the right," notes Dixon. "The heavy-handed way they've acted looks like the LAPD beating up Rodney King and only adds fuel to the fire for those trying to kill intellectual-property laws."

Jeffrey Dean Foster, a singer-songwriter from Winston-Salem, is not one of the big fish -- that is, a major-label recording artist and moneymaker -- who benefits from their work.

Consequently, like other independent musicians and labels, he is largely indifferent and unsympathetic.

"I have no concept of what the RIAA does for me," says Foster. "If I were U2 and most of my earnings were going out the window to file-sharing, it might be different. But if I were (as rich as) U2, then why would I care?"

"I think musicians and songwriters deserve a good living from doing good work, but the level of rock riches in the past 30 years has gotten so big that it's pretty out of whack, much like ballplayers and CEOs."

Admittedly, the digital era has turned out to be a Pandora's box leading to online piracy and other complications. But there have been benefits, especially to smaller bands and labels.

"I love digital!" says Jamie Hoover, guitarist and singer with Charlotte's Spongetones. "My life has been much better in the digital age."

According to Hoover, digital sales have generated dependable revenue and spared the Spongetones from further dealings with crooked distributors.

"Now, when we sell records, they stay sold," he continues. "I'd much rather sell 100, than ship 1,000. We split money up nearly every quarter, which we never did before."

"Even with downloading and thieves, I'd much rather give my music to someone who at least actually likes and listens to it. That's something."

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Curiously, the music industry already has begun sabotaging the very thing that's helped revive it in recent years.

In April 2009, Apple raised the price of selected (read: popular) songs from $0.99 to $1.29 on its iTunes downloading site.

Despite the fact that iTunes just crossed the ten-billionth-download threshold, "Billboard" magazine announced earlier this month that paid digital downloads actually declined by 1 percent between the first quarters of 2009 and 2010. It was the first such decline since 2003.

Apple's mid-recession price hike has been blamed for the downturn, no doubt driving at least some consumers back to scouring the Internet for freebies.

So is there any solution to this situation that is fair to all involved, especially those who make music?

"I can see a time when most people will gravitate toward an online service where you pay something like $10 or $15 a month to have all the music you can possibly handle," says Rick Clark, a musician, producer and music consultant to the film industry. "The idea of not having your personal space cluttered with lots of CDs or albums you don't really listen to anymore will appeal to many, as well as the convenience of having a seemingly limitless on-demand music library that you can program.

"Maybe the Spotify model or something along those lines will be what ultimately wins out. Under this model, people are selecting the music they want, and it is all built into a standard monthly fee. I believe most people will find the whole effort of stealing music less appealing or more hassle than it is worth. I'm actually hopeful at this stage of the game."

Contact Parke Puterbaugh at parkeputerbaugh@earthlink.net