In a wide-ranging and fairly balanced article, BusinessWeek offers a must read perspective on the RIAA’s lawsuits surrounding the illegal downloading of music. Here’s a quote about Tanya Andersen’s pending countersuit:
“Andersen is going after the recording industry under conspiracy laws.
She argues the Recording Industry Association of America, the
industry’s trade group, and its affiliates worked together on a broad
campaign to intimidate people into making financial payoffs. The
defendants “secretly met and conspired” to develop a “litigation
enterprise” with the ultimate goal of preserving the major record
companies’ control over the music business.”
What strikes me, and the writer, as odd is the fact that the RIAA “informed her that the minimum damages for each copyrighted song shared was $750.” $750.00?
I go back to something I read a while ago. The music industry made the decision about Digital Music a long time ago when they made the jump to CD’s. That’s where this started. Everything since then has been too-late attempts to deal with the “unexpected” developments of technology.
I find it impossible to accept, however, that the recording industry never saw the age of personal digital recording and sharing coming. I mean, cassettes were huge when CD’s came out and the industry is NAMED the recording industry.
You can’t tell me no one saw this coming.
