p2pnet news | RIAA News:- "A good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value. If it starts to pursue paying customers – which doesn’t seem that outlandish at this point – then I guess we’ll all know the extent of the desperation.

"Investor, beware."

The warning is from Motley Fool’s Alyce Lomax.

But she isn’t discussing a company going down the drain. Rather, she’s talking about the corporate music industry, and she was inspired by news centering on Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG and their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Says Lomax:

Current litigation against Jeffrey Howell of Arizona shows that while the industry’s gone after him for file-sharing, not ripping MP3s, it’s also taking exception to recordings on his computer that he copied from CDs he purchased, with the outlook that Howell is also liable for the "unauthorized copies" he made and placed on his PC. Although there’s a lot of clarification going on over the Internet now – pointing out that the RIAA can’t specifically target ripping CDs for personal use, since that falls within "fair use" – the RIAA hasn’t lent much reason to give it the benefit of the doubt as a reasonable entity here lately.

After all, a lawyer for Sony BMG said during a recent high-profile file-sharing trial that making one measly copy was, "a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’." I joked at the time that maybe they’ll come after us for singing tunes in the shower, but at this point, maybe that thought isn’t funny so much as scary.

I’d think companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.com might start to get uncomfortable, since their participation in the varying channels of the digital music business rely on content that can be used with electronic devices in a way consumers can accept. If the RIAA does start targeting personal use, it certainly could spur a newfound revolution away from legit services (or even to new, more innovative solutions). As it stands, the industry already seems almost hell-bent on creating plenty of disgruntled customers who don’t particularly want to do business with it anymore … and then suing them for it.

However, Alice, this is nothing new. It’s merely yet another variation on a bizarre marketing theme started by the Big 4 in 2003 when they began to sue their own customers, including twelve-year-olds.

Meanwhile, confusion continues on precisely what all of this means, as a recent discussing on the subject proves.

You can see it on a YouTube video called, appropriately, FOX Friends garbles story about new RIAA complaints.

Slashdot it!

Also see:
Motley Fool – We’re All Thieves to the RIAA, January 2, 2008
corporate music industry – Rip your legal CD? You’re a thief: RIAA, December 31, 2007
confusion continues – Copying RIAA CDs: the bottom line, January 2, 2008

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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