The Music Industry Has Finally Learned

Looks like the music industry has finally figured out suing your customers is bad business. It's not just suing their customers, but the way they went about it. Not only did they sue over 38,000 people for sharing music, they wanted outrageous settlement sums. The RIAA wanted $700 and more, per song that was shared. Some of the settlements they were after had total fines in the six figure range. They also filed tons of John Doe lawsuits. They didn't even know who the people were that they were after. They demanded that universities, internet service providers, and telephone companies turn over private records to them, so they could put names to IP addresses of suspected file sharers. On top of that, they used scare tatics. They knew that plenty of the college students and single moms couldn't afford lawyers. They would offer defendents settlement deals that ranged in the tens of thousands of dollars or else, if they lost, they would have to pay judgements that were in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

However, things weren't going there way. When the RIAA finaly won a settlement for $30,000 from a 16 year old who downloaded 37 songs, a judge reduced the fine to $7,400, which the RIAA accepted. Meanwhile, other judges were throwing out their lawsuits completly. While the RIAA has deep pockets and an army of high paid lawyers, one has to wonder how much is a copied song really worth. Not to mention some artists themselves were against the lawsuits. Of course the judgements themselves didn't go to the artists, they just lined the pockets of RIAA.

I can't help but wonder why the music industry didn't emnrace the whole music download system a long time ago. Being a musician myself, I'd be happy if someone shared my music with someone else. What better way to get your music out there then by letting people listen to some of it. Face it, most of us get little or no radio play and even less of us are on MTV. The sharing of music is probably the best way for a musician or band to get any other exposure.

These lawsuits failed on so many levels it's unbelievable. The only ones who win are the RIAA's legal army. Bet they aren't too happy with this tunr of events.