It must be hard to be a one-name mogul, burdened with the task of meeting so many of the public's entertainment needs. I'm writing to let you know that I feel your pain.

I can tell you're miserable. You're feeling the anguish that comes when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place.

On one hand, you hate your customers. Which is entirely understandable. After all, they keep stealing your products. Then, after they steal your products once, they form global clubs to make sure that everyone else has your products too.

On the other hand, you hate the talent who actually make your products. Which is why your bands are suing you to get free, your writers are posting their ideas on the Web for all to see, and your actors are looking for ways to remove you so that they can talk directly to their audiences. No, it certainly isn't easy being a monopolist.

Here's what you're up against. Rafael (not his real name) is a criminal. Like the vast majority of people living in Mexico, he buys his music from one of the 12,000 street vendors who rove the country. Every time Rafael uses his hard-earned money to buy a CD, he buys a pirated bootleg. The New York Times says that more than half of the albums sold in Mexico are pirated.

Todd is a criminal as well. Every time he uses the computer in his dorm room at Tufts (not his real university) to download a DVD, he's violating the law.

Lois isn't a criminal, but every time she goes to the movies, she risks being kicked out. Uniformed guards search Lois and other movie patrons as they come in, confiscating energy bars (not her real snack), bottled water, and other contraband that cut into sales at concession stands.

So how do you and your cohorts respond to such threats? It appears that you believe that the best thing to do is to make more criminals. Make Steve Jobs a criminal for selling iPods. Call Michael Dell a felon every time he sells a laptop with a CD burner in it.

But the reality is that if you monopolists would stop thinking like the robber barons of old and start thinking like the entrepreneurs of today, you would encounter another path. Because there is another path. It's the path of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and a few other profit-maximizing individuals who are smart enough to know when to fight the market -- and when to embrace it.

The Death of Scarcity

Why can't Nike charge $500 for sneakers? Because there are easy substitutes. In almost every industry, consumers have countless choices. And unless a product is truly unique, they can take their money elsewhere.

The media business has always been different. At its heart, the media business is actually about the prospect of being a monopolist -- and about getting paid a lot more than your products cost to make. A few years ago, if a couch potato (God love 'em) wanted to watch TV, there were only three channels he could choose from. If a moviegoer wanted to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there was only the William Goldman version, and she had to buy a ticket to see it.

The point is this: The media business was built on scarcity. Scarcity of spectrum. Scarcity of hits. Scarcity caused by copyright and limited shelf space. Consumers hate scarcity. But you and I know that monopolists love scarcity. When consumers have fewer choices, a monopoly thrives.

Scarcity made it easy to get fat and happy. But almost overnight, the scarcity on which you built your media monopolies started to disappear. All of a sudden, there are about a billion channels available on the Web. There's a movie theater in any home with a DVD player. Amazon.com has infinite shelf space, so retail market power is now a myth. It's hard to charge take-it-or-leave-it prices when the consumer can just leave it.