Consumer Guide for Today's Media

The music industry has been around for a while, but has only entered into the realm of the Internet relatively recently. The big mogul in the music industry is the RIAA. They constitute a consortium of record labels that defends musicians. They are the ones that destroyed Napster at the turn of the century by suing for 20 billion dollars. As seen in a recent issue of the Kansan, they also sue students for file sharing. To many Internet users, the whole issue has become at best counterproductive, at worst, a full-on war.

Some of the RIAA's antics have been downright ridiculous. In 2006, the RIAA filed a suit to make sharing any files, ever, illegal. As the Internet is nothing more than files transferred over cables, this would have made any use of the Internet illegal. As you're reading this right now, you can guess how great that turned out. This is, presumably, in pure spite that the RIAA's attempt at getting immunity from prosecution for malicious hacking got shot down. The RIAA has been in some trouble on and off, as more and more artists realize that the lawsuits made to get "their money" that was "stolen" by the downloaders has never made it back into their pockets.

The RIAA is, pure and simple, on a crusade. Not even the artists it represents care as much about this as the RIAA does. I've got to wonder what will stop them.

Well, we could start with Arizona. A judge in Arizona recently shot down the RIAA's claim that making files available is illegal. In fact, reasons the judge, you have done nothing illegal until somebody else takes the music off your hard drive, and then, only if you intended to share that particular file.

What does this mean? It means that if you have LimeWire, have it open, and are sharing files, the RIAA can't touch you...

until somebody actually downloads from you. At that point, you're still in legal trouble. It's a step, though. Previously, the RIAA could assume you were distributing pirated music on the basis that you might be distributing pirated music. Now, the burden of proof is on the RIAA.

What I really want to know is, how does this thing stay together? The artists don't like it. The record labels don't like it. The customers don't like it. Fewer and fewer politicians like it every time it does something annoying (like suing MySpace) or incalculably stupid (like SUING DEAD PEOPLE). It's not delivering on promises. It's not changing to fit new markets. It's not even trying to win over consumers...

It almost seems like the RIAA is just suing people to make money for the heads of the RIAA...

Not that I'd ever dream of saying such a thing were true. That would be libelous.