MDY v Blizzard [1] already set an (absurd, unconscionable) precedent that people who purchased World of Warcraft did not own their copy of the digital work, but were licensees -- regardless of whether they ever agreed to the EULA or the service's Terms of Use.

Further, the court held that copying a digital work into in-system memory by any program not 'unauthorized' by the rights-holder constituted infringement and the operator thus subject to statutory penalties. (Seriously. Let that and its implications sink in.)

So the bad precedent already exists. And not only does it set some troublesome legal hurdles for future technologies, but a large swath of current technologies are suddenly in a very tenuous (and expensive) legal situation.

If the RIAA sticks to this 'license' argument, they could hold that not only is it infringement to copy your DRM-free iTunes tracks out of iTunes, but so much as playing your iTunes-purchased tracks via software other than iTunes is infringement (as it necessarily requires loading a copy of that digital work into memory).

[1] http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/arizona...