It's somewhat reassuring to know that media companies think p2p should be embraced sometime in the future. But the RIAA's reaction is incredibly shocking for a few reasons.

Pirates cost media companies some money.

So the RIAA sues people. This is understandable.

But they decide to go after more than just damages.
This is also understandable. I mean if you think someone is stealing from you, it's a reasonable reaction not to want to do business with them ever again.

They write up a plan to make money off of p2p downloads. This makes sense, piracy is not going to go away. Ok, their survival in the future might depend on making money off of p2p.

They decide to wait to implement this plan. This might be understandable if Big Music was just suing pirates for damages, say at max $2 per song.

But they are acting like they are trying to shut down p2p right now, so basically they are suing their future customers. So I'm really surprised.

If you think of piracy as stealing, think of it like this.
It's like a grocery store owner who has a problem with people stealing produce. He can't stop people from stealing, and if you do steal you are almost guaranteed to get away from it. So the owner sues anyone he catches, and tries to get 750x the value of the stolen goods ($750 is the minimum penalty per instance of infringement) to discourage stealing.

But then the store owner thinks up a way to profitably give away produce for free. He then decides to wait to implement this business model until nobody buys produce from him anymore.

Now a few years pass and giving away produce is an acceptable and viable business model. Now how well is that grocery store owner going to get people to support him. I can just imagine a startup's advertising campaign:
"We'll give you our fruit for free. Sure you can get it for free from a bigger competitor, but that company is the same one who decided that taking one apple was worth a $750 fine."

That grocery store owner is now only going to be able to get supporters in three cases.

1. He has a monopoly on a specific fruit. (Basically this would happen if the big media companies had signed all the decent bands in one genre).

2. He gets money no matter which store a person gets their fruit from. (So a 360 contract, you support a specific artist, you support Big Media).

3. He has more stores, so he is more convenient for the majority of people to support.(P2P is incredibly convenient, so this would only apply to people afraid of downloading viruses from a p2p network).

4. His supporters have never stolen fruit from him, or thought that $750 was a reasonable fine. (So you haven't ever pirated music, or you think the current lawsuits are reasonable).

Big media is just like that grocery store owner. They are actively going after an entire generation in a way that basically attacks that generation. The register did a survey where they found that the average teen has pirated 61% of his MP3 collection. And now they think that in a few years that generation will actively support them.

Register Survey: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/16/bmr_music_survey/

Wharton article on not suing your customers:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=863