I Want My Digital Freedom

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has brought its first music file sharing lawsuit to trial against a consumer and won. What may be seen as a victory by some is more likely to be seen by most consumers as an assault on their digital freedoms. After all, many of us lived through a time where making a copy of a record, cassette tape or a VHS copy of a movie for personal use was common practice. I personally had always made a backup copy of my music in case my tapes or CD’s were stolen. I also made a copy to keep my original in pristine condition while my copy took the abuse of traveling in my car. Well according to the RIAA’s lawyers this is illegal too.

For those of you who have not heard, the RIAA successfully prosecuted a woman for sharing over 1700 songs on KAZAA the now defunct file sharing service. She was fined $222,000. The RIAA has notified approximately 26,000 consumers that they have been implicated in illegal music file sharing. Most consumers are settling with the RIAA for $2000 - $3000. This was the first consumer that chose to fight the charges in court.

I fully support copyright protection for the artist. File sharing does take potential earning from artists who deserves to be duly compensated for their work. What I do have an issue with is the RIAA’s archaic methods of dealing with the issue. File sharing is not going away and is in fact it is increasing year after year. The recording industry is losing billions of dollars in potential sales because they are not staying ahead of technology not because of the relatively small amount of file sharing. They choose to alienate the music buying consumers they should be trying to convince to buy their products. The recording industry needs to make it extremely easy and inexpensive for consumers to procure their products. One of the recording industry largest, Universal, has embarked on a DRM free experiment.
Another innovative idea is gaining some traction. It is called Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing. The idea has been put forth by the Electronics Frontier Foundation. This link will take you their site which explains their very innovative proposal which I believe would benefit all parties involved. The consumer would pay a very small fee to freely download music, the recording industry and the artist would be fairly compensated for their products. If you care about your digital rights and the right of artists this is an effort you should get behind. Consumers unite and spread the good word. Last time I checked the customer was still king.