I suppose if you want to redefine “fair” as “whatever the RIAA decideds to charge” then they’re just asking for their fair share. However, that asking price is not market price, and reflects none of the cost used to produce the music; the marginal cost of digital music is zero, and it actually benefits artists to have their music distributed. This is not musicians asking to be recompensated for their costs, but record labels ostensibly representing musicians using the government to force anybody else to pay as much money as they can squeeze out for enjoying materials that not only cost them nothing, but actually helps the artists.

Yes, the public wants the best product as conveniently as they can get it and as cheaply as they can get it. This is true for ANY product and the businesses that can fulfill those desires the best will win out, which is the market’s way of simultaneously ensuring consumers get a good product and rewarding producers for providing it. Music is no different, but because the market price of mp3 files is basically zero, people like you bitch that the government needs to come in to ensure the artists can get a ‘fair’ price–that price is zero! Many, many artists give their music out for free and still make a profit, so this market price in no way inhibits their reward for giving the best product to consumers.

So yes…this is the fault of some “obsolete gatekeepers” who are in fact completely unwilling to change business models to reflect the market’s adaptation to technology, and instead spend resources lobbying governments to interfere in a way that helps neither consumers nor musicians as a whole.