Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
- Ecclesiastes 1:10

From Napster and The Pirate Bay to Apple and Sony with their radical Digital Rights Management schemes, you'd think that computers and digital technology will be the downfall of "the industry" (pick one or all: movie industry, music industry, television industry, game industry, publishing industry or software industry). If you ignore record profits across all of these media formats combined, you might have some sympathy for the RIAA and the armies of lawyers lobbying to create new laws to stop the new age digital thieves, but then you'd also have to think that this was genuinely something new and particularly threatening, which it's not.

For example, John Phillip Sousa made the argument in 1906 that the player piano and gramophone made himself and "every other popular composer ... victim[s] of a serious infringement on our clear moral rights in our own work" leading to the downfall of the industry, where composers refuse to write any new music at all. From the photocopier to the VCR to the cassette tape, Ars Technica collects 100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words; well worth your coffee time this morning.

References:
- 100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words, ars technica