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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
Is the music industry tone deaf or what?

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Friday, September 12, 2003
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If the recording industry wanted to make the point that song swapping is evil and needs to be stopped in the courtroom, you'd think it'd make that point by going after people unlikely to draw public sympathy.

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Couldn't the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) find some gang members or virus writers or maybe Al Qaeda followers intent on sharing Bo Donaldson and the Heywood's memorable hit, "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" with sleeper cells worldwide?

I MEAN, if Al Capone was eventually downed by tax charges, maybe song swapping could be the next technicality we use to take bad guys off the streets.

But a 12-year-old girl?

Brianna LaHara was one of the 261 people targeted by the RIAA this week for their alleged infringement of copyright law. She's a 12-year-old New York girl, an honor student who lives in a housing project--obviously a huge threat to the recording industry.

Brianna and her mom, Sylvia Torres, this week settled the lawsuit, paying the RIAA $2,000 and apologizing for stealing music. Torres said she thought a paid subscription to Kazaa made everything OK.

Smart thinking, RIAA. Instead of spotlighting the legitimate complaints of copyright owners, you manage to create a poster child for the fight against evil, greedy mega-corporations that don't care who they run over in order to make a buck--even little kids.

The RIAA defended the action, even as Sen. Dick Durban, D-Ill., poked fun at the group. "Are you headed to junior high schools to round up the usual suspects?" Durbin asked RIAA President Cary Sherman during a Senate Judiciary hearing.

Sherman responded, according to an AP report, that most people don't shoplift because they fear getting arrested. Of course, most people also agree that shoplifting is stealing and therefore deserves punishment.

I'M NOT SURE where the RIAA goons went to law school, but you'd think that before filing suit they'd want to know everything they could about the evil-doers they were suing. And why 261? Are there going to be anymore surprise defendants? Maybe a 90-year-old shut-in whose only remaining joy in life is listening to big band tunes downloaded from the Net?

Make no mistake: The RIAA is in the right here. However badly the music industry is alienating customers and clinging to a business model that's rapidly dying, swapping music is stealing music. Maybe that law should be changed, but until it is online music swapping is illegal in almost all cases and the RIAA has every right to sue.

The danger in doing so, however, is that the record industry is creating a bunch of martyrs whose experience at the hands of the copyright cops will make everyone else sit up and notice. And when that happens, the electorate will rise up and demand protection from such lawsuits (which the average person considers frivolous), and their elected officials will give it to them. Copyright protection will then be weakened, and the RIAA, perhaps flush from winning a few battles, will end up losing the war.

What the RIAA should be doing is helping customers find legal ways to get the online music they want. I'd hoped that the opening of Apple's 99-cents-a-song Music Store represented a major change in RIAA strategy.

The recording industry's goal shouldn't be to stop music swapping, or alienate customers (as lawsuits are sure to do) but to rechannel swapping into acceptable, licensed channels. Until such channels exist in sufficient quantity and quality to meet customer demand, the RIAA's lawsuits will at best further vilify the recording industry and at worst inspire new laws that will take the crime out of music swapping.

That's what customers really want and what the music business should fear most.

What do you think? Is the RIAA right to sue illegal downloaders? How else should they respond to the downloading issue? TalkBack to me! 

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