Extremes? It's All About Them.

The RIAA's a sue'n, companies mergin' won't fix those problems anyhow, and sales are falling (though it's much more complicated than just piracy), but not for iTunes or Rhapsody which is streaming 500,000 songs per day. And Virgin is giving downloads a try for 60p (around $.90). Live in the middle and sell. Exist on either end of this battle, and the chaos might warp your sense of reason.

"It's not all file-sharing," said Andy Gershon, the president of V2 Records, home to the recording artists Moby and the White Stripes. "I do think that right now, the business is sick but music is great."

Other record label executives agreed. Among the problems they cited were the consolidation of radio stations, making it harder to expose new bands and records, and the lack of a widely popular musical trend like teen-pop, which relied on stars like Britney Spears and `N Sync to drive young people to record stores.

"The industry has to increase the price of illegal file sharing and make it more attractive to download music legally or purchase CD's," said Hal R. Varian, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "That is the economic gap the industry is trying to close." (Neil Strauss/NY Times, Executives Can See Problems Beyond File-Sharing)

So back to the war: Durwood Pickle, 71, of Richardson, Texas (via Ted Bridis/AP and the NYTimes) said: "I didn't do it, and I don't feel like I'm responsible. It's been stopped now, I guarantee you that.'' The RIAA is suing him for file sharing on a computer his grandchildren apparently used. "I'm not a computer-type person,'' Pickle said. "They come in and get on the computer. How do I get out of this? Dadgum it, got to get a lawyer on this.''

Also, the latest in P2P? PeerCaching. Apparently, it allows ISPs to cache frequently downloaded files, and one of the founders of KaZaa is selling it. Niklas Zennstrom no longer has an interest in KaZaa, but he has developed this software that will reduce the costs to ISPs for the large file sharing traffic they now experience. Music companies are taking note. Interesting legal issues for the caching companies about publishing, links, etc.

In case you haven't been subpoenaed by the RIAA, but want to do the Clean Slate Program (pdf description), here is the affidavit (or pdf here) per Frank. But do remember, the RIAA doesn't cover all record companies, so the rest of them can still come after you, not to mention the music publishers who are in a different union. The privacy policy with the documents does not promise to prevent this by not sharing the information if required by law (you know, like, entities subpoenaing each other and such):

Information provided on the Clean Slate Program Affidavit will be used solely in connection with conducting and enforcing the Clean Slate Program. Information will not be used for marketing, promotional or public relations purposes. Information will not be made public or given to third parties, including individual copyright owners, except if necessary to enforce a participant's violation of the pledges set forth in the Affidavit or otherwise required by law.

Then there's this from Shawn Langlois/CBS Marketwatch where the file sharers are thumbing noses at the RIAA:

Howler24 drew a line of futility between what he feels are two ill-fated crusades: "Yes, you can cry and moan about the 'evils' of drugs and file sharing. But when you're through foaming at the mouth, you have to realize that they are BOTH here to stay. No law, no court can change that. The best thing to do is to control it and make it profitable, instead of driving it underground."

Gannett on Fight over free music on Web coming to Congress talks about the latest bills in the House to prohibit filesharing, and has this: And Cindy Cohn and Fred von Lohmann, lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said 250 million people worldwide are using music file-sharing software. Even if the 60 million Americans who have downloaded music are stopped, the free music party on the Web will keep going, said Cohn, whose organization gives advice to people who are subpoenaed. "Trying to throw 60 million Americans in jail is not a reasonable approach," von Lohmann said. "That's more than voted for President Bush."

Course there are plenty of people who are scared and supposedly staying off the file sharing networks as has been well reported in almost every story on the 261 lawsuits today, but the reality is that each of the past three summers, when people go on vacation, there were the same dips in P2P traffic. So the bump up in the past week that apparently occurred in KaZaa traffic is in line with years past too, and belies the notion that it's the subpoenas and lawsuits that caused less traffic in July and August.

Posted by Mary Hodder at September 08, 2003 05:42 PM