Music industry watch

RIAA roundup

While I've been in the desert the RIAA has started offering amnesty to file traders if they sign their life away -- this was timed just right with the first wave of lawsuits to hit the courts. The lawsuits are aimed at filetraders, including 12 year old kids and 71 year olds:

A 71-year-old Texas man, Durwood Pickle, told the Associated Press yesterday that his teen-aged grandchildren must have downloaded songs during visits to his home, then left the sharing features enabled so other Internet users could access them. He said his grandchildren had explained the situation to the RIAA in an e-mail.

"I didn't do it, and I don't feel like I'm responsible," Pickle said. "Dadgum it, got to get a lawyer on this."

The EFF has spoken out against this amnesty in their usual eloquence, but Paul Boutin wraps up this whole mess in his article An offer you can refuse:

To those determined to make an end-run around the music biz's lack of attractive online offerings (Apple's iTunes Music Store is still the best of a weak lot), the lawsuits just mean it's time to abandon KaZaA by moving their game of keep-away to the next playground. KaZaA rose to prominence only after Napster was shut down. Now that RIAA lawyers have proved they can subpoena the names of KaZaA users from their ISPs, expect a mass migration to anonymous, encrypted P2P networks designed specifically to fix the known vulnerabilities in KaZaA. Earth Station 5 is the most outrageous example. It uses a mesh of proxy servers, encrypted data, and other identity-hiding tricks to keep copyright owners from tracking who's downloading what. To top it all off, the company—which recently issued a press release declaring itself "at war" with the entertainment industry—is headquartered in Palestine.

Did anyone say Cat & Mouse game?? This is too painful to watch...

Posted by Mayhem at September 9, 2003 10:27 AM