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RIAA Lawsuits: One Size Fits 751
John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-12-16
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The RIAA continues its efforts to wipe out music file swapping as they filed 751 lawsuits on Thursday. This is part of their long-term campaign by the RIAA to stop what they call illegal copyright infringement.
The music industry has been in a downward spiral since the advent of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing with companies like Napster. Even though Napster reinvented itself as a pay service, many other file sharing networks appeared. While the RIAA has gone after some of them legally, like Grokster and are trying to work with others to develop a type of pay service, the problem is still around. To that end, the RIAA goes after the downloaders.
While some pay services, like iTunes, have been extraordinarily successful, P2P for free is still the dominant form of downloads. This is a worldwide phenomenon and the record industry is fighting a losing battle.
According to the Reuters article, college campuses appear to be a major part of the focus. They're going after students at Drexel, Harvard and USC just to name a few. The problem the RIAA is going to run into is this isn't going to stop downloads. Recent studies have shown the younger demographic, referring to those getting ready to head to college, really don't care about the illegality and think it's unreasonable for record companies to expect them not to download these files for free.
Recent attempts to stop this by companies like Sony BMG have ended in ugly disasters that cost both the artists and the company. It stands to reason they'd go back to the lawsuit route. But they are fighting a losing battle. As I've said before, as long as it's much easier to do the "illegal" activity than the "legal" one, people will go for the illegal one, especially since it's cheaper for them. In that respect, it is unreasonable to expect people to pay when it's easier to get it for free, illegal or not.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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