Ticked off by PCMag’s list of alternatives to Limewire — the file-sharing website that recently shut down after losing a copyright infringement lawsuit — members of the Recording Industry Association of America fired off an angry letter to Vivek Shah, chief executive of PCMag publisher Ziff Davis. The execs argue that PCMag is “slyly encouraging people to steal more music” by acknowledging the existence of other file-sharing websites, and asks that article be removed.

(The letter also blames PCMag for an article about the resurrection of Limewire, despite being written for PC World. Apparently the RIAA can’t tell the difference.)

Of course, PCMag isn’t backing down, and has no legal reason to do so. “It worries me that the music industry took this action, because it reeks of desperation,” Editor Lance Ulanoff writes. “… It’s time for these music execs to pull their collective heads out of the sand and fully acknowledge and accept all the ways their industry has changed.”

The most amusing part of the RIAA’s letter to PCMag was this little tidbit at the end: “We suspect you’d feel differently about this issue if, like the music industry, you’d had to let go more than half of the talented writers and journalists who create your magazine because of uncontrolled piracy of their work.”

Um, didn’t PCMag discontinue its print edition two years ago? Aren’t major magazines and newspapers around the country downsizing due to the changing media landscape? Whether it’s music piracy or an abundance of free websites and blogs, every old media company is struggling to adapt on the Internet.

In fairness, the music industry has warmed somewhat to new digital music ventures lately. On-demand subscription services like MOG, Rdio and Rhapsody let you stream more music than you could listen to in a lifetime for flat monthly rates, and Internet radio services like Pandora and Slacker Radio give you personalized playlists for free. The amount of legal music you can get these days for less than the price of a CD is astounding, and record labels deserve praise for allowing it to happen. Even piracy can’t give you these kinds of services.

And yet, the music industry can be so draconian at the same time. The RIAA spends millions of dollars every year on legal costs and recoups hardly any of it. New file-sharing resources pop up as soon as others shut down. And for every PCMag that the music industry tries to bully over an article about peer-to-peer services, there’s a PC World that’s willing to write about the same topic. I don’t see the point.

As with the PCWorld tests, PCMag’s have AT&T as the clear overall winner, with download speeds that trounce everything but Sprint’s still-not-widely-available 4G network. AT&T didn’t do as well in the “Consistency” tests, however, which would tend to confirm the theory that AT&T’s 3G network is extremely zippy…when it’s working well. Still, I feel like everyone who declares that it’s a well-known fact that AT&T’s network sucks should be forced to read reports like this one.

To steal a meme from Tip O’Neill, all wireless networks are local–what’s most important is that your carrier work well in the areas you need it most, and performance can very literally block by block. PCMag’s San Francisco Bay Area results show AT&T winning for both download speed and consistency. My iPhone works just fine at home, but remains flaky to the point of being unusable–especially for voice calls, which PCMag didn’t test–in much of San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. (The story cleverly uses Google Maps to show the exact locations where tests were conducted, but doesn’t break out the results to that level of detail.)

What the world really needs is a way to get wireless speed and reliability data down to the Zip Codes you hang out in. Anyone know if there’s anyone out there trying to collect this data?

Which is a big deal, since the 82-year-old publisher had as long, influential, and impressive a history of consumer publishing as any company on the planet. Among its titles over the years, other than EGM and PC Mag: Amazing Stories, Car and Driver, Computer Shopper, Creative Computing, MacUser, MacWeek, PC/Computing, PC Week, Popular Electronics, Popular Photography, Stereo Review, Yahoo Internet Life., and many others I’m not thinking of right now. Nobody published more successful mags read by more enthusiasts with a wider range of passions, or made more money doing so.

Ziff Davis remains in business and will be focusing its attention on the PCMag.com Web site network.  Given the state of print publishing and Ziff’s many years of decline as a print powerhouse, its departure from magazine publishing isn’t surprising–and might even be a good idea. It surely won’t be the last old-school magazine publisher that leaves magazines completely behind. But it’s still hard to get my head around the idea that nobody anywhere will read Ziff Davis magazines anymore.

(Necessary but superfluous disclaimer: I spent 18 years working at IDG, Ziff Davis’s principal rival in tech publishing–which is still successfully publishing magazines around the world.)

PCMag.com will live on and has a good chance of doing well for a long time. And in an interesting twist, Ziff will continue the Zinio version of PC Mag–a digital version that has the look and feel of the print edition, but which is available only in digital form. (I wish ‘em luck with that experiment, but I suspect that this is an intermediate stage in the life of PC Mag, and it’ll go Web-only sooner rather than later.)

It’s impossible for me to contemplate this news in the absence of the fact that I spent almost fourteen years at PC Magazine‘s principal print and online rival, PC World. (Where I’m no longer an insider, but I wouldn’t be stunned if PC World existed in print even after PC Mag ceases Zinio distribution as well.) In the media world, it isn’t exactly fashionable to say you like print publishing, but here goes: As much as I love the Web, I’m a print fan, too. And I’m sorry to see the powerhouse I spent so many years competing with going away in its most famous form.

On the other hand, having spent so many years working on PC World in both print and Web versions, I know that it’s awfully hard to straddle two very different media and do justice to both of them. I suspect that PC Mag editor Lance Ulanoff and his staff are feeling liberated in some ways today–without print deadlines to worry about, they’ll have some opportunities to do some cool new stuff on their site.

I have more to say, but I’m dashing off for a meeting–in the meantime, here’s an article by PC Mag cofounder Cheryl Woodard on the origins of the publication (including its fascinating relationship to the founding of PC World).