Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.
Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry’s lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has
legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. To read more click
here.
I agree that burning a CD and giving that burned copy to someone is stealing from the artist and musician, but this is going too far. The industry will kill itself off with this attitude. I guess they just do not get it.The reason why I believe that the music industry will kill itself off has to do with a conversation with some friends. Yesterday at work we discussed this case and the prevailing belief is that no one will buy any more CDs in the near future. Instead, as one of my friends stated, they will go to I-tunes or its equivalent to get their music.
Then again, maybe, the record industry will begin to sue the people who download their music from I-tunes and have it on two I-pods at the same time. I wonder if the record industry is considering if they could win this type of lawsuit.
Thomas
