The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has spent the last couple of years suing its customers in an effort to hold back the tide of technology and protect its vice-like grip on the intellectual property of the artists it represents. The focus of all this legal maneuvering has been Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, mainly Kazaa, where music lovers upload songs in MP3 format so others can download them without paying for them.

The arguments for and against music sharing on P2P networks are well-documented and not worth rehashing here. They may also be moot as the most tech-savvy of music lovers have found another, more efficient way to grab free copies of the music they want.

They’re using software with names like StationRipper, TotalRecorder and ReplayRadio. These applications let users connect with any of the hundreds of Internet radio stations and record the streams, separating each song into a separate MP3 file. The software even lets users record from multiple stations simultaneously. It’s an easy matter, then, to sift through the songs, discarding those that don’t appeal and keeping the keepers.

Said one stoked fan, posting to the Download.com user comments section, “I have gotten more music in one nite than 2 years of P2P! This is sooo cool, listen to 6000 channels and rip simultaneously. No problems or difficulties whatsoever, no popups or spyware or any of that.”

What’s more, some of this software makes it easy to rip anything streaming over the Web, including live and proprietary feeds over Windows Media Player and the Real Networks player. If you’ve ever rented a movie download from Movielink or Cinema Now, you’ll understand why Hollywood will soon be worried about these new applications.

PR people, in the meantime, should also consider the consequences of broadcasting annual meetings, roadshows, executive speeches, conference calls, and other multimedia streams. In the past, we controlled where these resided and how they were used. Now, anybody can record your Webcast and offer it in their own context. How does the idea of your CEO’s speech being “sampled” sound to you?

The Washington Post had a piece dealing with these digital broadcast recorders.