This post was originally published on OneMovementWord.com, official blog for Australian music conference One Movement for Music Perth.

It’s no secret that the music industry is fractured. The point was driven home once again last Friday when the RIAA – the main lobby group for the recording industry in the US – won their second high profile lawsuit against an individual fan accused of sharing music files online. Damages in the two cases totaled over $2,500,000.

The recording industry is bankrupting fans in court, technology is reshaping the marketplace faster than anyone can keep up, and fewer people than ever before are buying music. How did we get here? More importantly, how do we respond?

One of the biggest roadblocks in the way of healing is the industry’s unwillingness to let go of the past. So much has happened in the last 10, even 5 years. The consolidation of record labels, the digital revolution, the social web. Each new development has brought its share of challenges and opportunities, but the clock can’t be turned back. It’s time to stop guarding our castles and throw open the doors to change. In order to make real steps toward a unified music industry progress must be embraced, not feared.

Unfortunately, this industry isn’t such a big fan of change. For years the record companies were riding a wave of incredible profits. In the 90’s the cost of a CD peaked as high as $19 in the US.  People were willing to part with the cash because there was no alternative. The record labels had fans right where they wanted them. They even convinced themselves that things could remain that way forever.

When Napster arrived on the scene the limitations of the old system were brought into sharp focus. Fans were tired of being overcharged and under-served. A new precedent for finding and sharing music was established.

Had the industry been willing, they could have recognized the new ways that fans were finding and interacting with music. Instead they shut it down. But it was too late – the world had tasted the potential of digital distribution. While the major labels were still patting themselves on the back for their victory over Napster, a thousand smaller, more agile networks were already being deployed to take its place.

Years later many industry leaders have since admitted that they missed a big time opportunity in their handling of Napster. Geoff Taylor, head of UK major label trade group BPI penned a now famous article for the BBC expressing his regrets. Unfortunately, this concession has done little to affect the way the music business is run. Instead of learning from their mistakes the major labels retreat further into protectionism. Today nearly every new technology, service and alternative business model is met with litigation.

It’s time for the music industry to stop trying to protect what has already been lost and to begin to look forward at what the future might hold for the music business. The playing field has been leveled. Artists have the tools to what only labels were capable of providing only a few short years ago. Has technology made record labels obsolete? Some believe so, but I disagree. Artists still have much to benefit from what a label can bring to the table. It simply won’t look like it did ten years ago. Both parties have the potential to go so much further if they come together as true partners to create an environment where quality music can thrive.

And that’s what this should really be about. There’s so much talk of money and business  models and economics that it’s easy to forget that music remains at the heart of this industry. Where great music is produced, fans will emerge. They’ll even be willing to open their wallets if they feel that they are supporting the music and the artists they love. More music is being created now than ever before, and never in history has it been so easily accessible. It’s an opportunity that begs to be seized, and if we won’t do it someone else will. Because one thing is certain: the music will go on, with or without any of us.

Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry this week. Make sure to check out anything you might have missed and leave your comments. Know something we don’t? Submit a story.

Also check out my guest post over at www.OneMovementWord.com, the official blog of Australian music industry conference One Movement for Music Perth. One I was asked to write on the topic ‘What will it take for artist, industry and fan unite?’ That’s a rather loaded question and I’m not sure how qualified I am to answer it, but I did my best. I’ll be re-posting it here on Creative Deconstruction early next week, but I’m sure my Australian friends would appreciate it if you stopped by to check it out. Let me know what you think.

Most Popular:

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This Week:

What the music industry and the credit crisis have in common – Some interesting and worrisome parallels I have observed…

New music releases for August 11th 2009 – Modest Mouse, Japandroids, Fruit Bats, and more.

The return of the Supergroup – Surely declining record sales have nothing to do with this, right?

Imogen Heap shows us that DIY pays off – and takes a lot of work - Some great discussion happening here over the past few days. Check it out and add your thoughts.

Music Video Picks:

Coldplay Strawberry Swing – Stunning new video. You’ll never look at sidewalk chalk the same way again.

This Week in Music History:

1977 – Elvis Presley was found dead lying on the floor in his bathroom by his girlfriend Ginger Alden, he had been seated on the toilet reading ‘The Scientific Search For Jesus’. He died of heart failure at the age of 42. His first record for RCA, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, was also his first US No.1. He starred in 31 films. Elvis holds the record for the most entries on the US Hot 100 chart with 154. (This Day in Music)

Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry this week. Make sure to check out anything you might have missed and leave your comments. Know something we don’t? Submit a story.

Most Popular:

5 Reasons Why the Performance Rights Act is a Bad Idea – The judicial hearing to discuss this bill last week put this issue back in the spotlight.

3 Ways to Make Music Worth Paying For - The first 3 of 6 concepts for driving value in a world of free. Based on Technium’s ‘Eight Generatives of Free.’

This Week:

Is ‘Joel Fights Back’ Really the David to the RIAA’s Goliath? – I want to see the RIAA challenged as much as the next guy, but was this the right case to do that?

New Album Releases August 4th 2009 - Find and download the week’s best new releases – and Japandroids, Modest Mouse, The Fruit Bats, and Lightning Dust.

‘Performance Rights Act’ Discussed in Heated Senate Hearing – A commentary on last week’s Performance Rights and Parity hearing in the Senate.

Connect with Creative Deconstruction – A quick thank you to the wonderful readers here at Creative Deconstruction, as well as information on the different ways to connect.

Lawmakers Praise Napster for File Sharing Innovations in 2000 – A surprising look back at lawmakers’ all but forgotten excitement over Napster and it’s young creator.

Music Video Picks:

No new videos this week – check out the archives.

This Week in Music History:

1969 The photo session for the cover of The Beatles ‘Abbey Road’ album took place on the crossing outside Abbey Road studios. Photographer Iain McMillan, balanced on a step-ladder in the middle of the road took six shots of John, Ringo, Paul, and George walking across the zebra crossing while a policeman held up the traffic. The band then returned to the studio and recorded overdubs on ‘The End’, ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ and ‘Oh! Darling’. (This Day in Music.com)

This little gem appeared today on the blog of Charles Nesson, the attorney representing Joel Tenenbaum in his recent bout with the RIAA. In a letter addressed to Nesson, Robert John Smith of the Louisiana Capital Appeals Project makes the argument that the laws used by the RIAA against Joel Tenenbaum were never intended to cover the sharing of music files over peer to peer networks. In it he transcribes large sections of an October 9, 2000, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Provo, Utah called “Utah’s Digital Economy and the Future: Peer-To-Peer and Other Emerging Technologies.” The hearing featured then 19-year old Napster creator Shawn Fanning, and offers an often surprising look at the way file sharing was viewed by policy makers when it first arrived on the scene.

Senator Orin Hatch (pictured above) introduced Fanning to the rest of the committee and a group of students who were present. The Senator seemed to have no shortage of praise for him and the Napster platform itself:

“It’s this peer-to-peer technology approach that basically has formulated opportunities for people like never before. And we’re moving more and more into peer-to-peer technology; and when you look at Gnutella, which doesn’t even need a server, it’s a slow system, but nevertheless someday somebody is going to break through on that. Napster was the reason I think we’ve been able to even move in that direction. So let’s turn to Shawn Fanning, who at 18 years of age developed this application and this process, and deserves an awful lot of credit. We’re very proud of him, and he’s been with us back in Washington and agreed to come to Utah especially today just to chat with us a little bit about what his perspectives are. And if some of you young students would like to come up and sit on the floor up here, for those of you who are standing, we would be glad to have you come up here and surround this place, and we’ll turn the time over to Shawn Fanning at this point.”

Smith notes that ”it is important here to remember that Napster was not selling licensed songs at this point. People were uploading and downloading their music, and Naspter provided the platform and indexing. In other words, Hatch is praising the very activity that costs Joel $675,000.”

Smith again quotes Senator Hatch as he goes on to quite accurately describe to potential benefits of peer to peer networks for both personal communication and business:

“Peer-to-peer means that everyone’s home computer becomes like a server, so that rather than many customers browsing through the content stored on large servers, individuals search for information or entertainment on each other’s computers. This technology could reduce costs for individuals who want to be their own publisher. It allows for more up-to-date information to be more quickly searchable, and could make more efficient use of computing power. It could further connect us to each other.”

According to Smith, “Fanning went on to explain exactly how Napster works, how as of then they were not paying artist royalties, how wide the practice of sharing music files had becomes (among both children and their parents), how the technology can benefit independent artists, how music sampling can lead to increased revenues for artists and the industry, etc. Shawn even downloaded a song from Napster for Hatch and the Audience to listen to during the hearing.”

It’s incredible how far we’ve come in the decade since that hearing took place. In the wrong direction, unfortunately. It seems that policy makers had a much better understanding in 2000 of the potential that platforms such as Napster provided for progress in not only the music industry, but in other sectors as well.

Am I wrong in thinking that we’ve gone backward in our views of copyright and file sharing since the beginning of this millenium? Leave your comments and let me know what you think.

As many of you will have already heard, the RIAA won the second of two high profile cases this past Friday. This time it was against 25 year-old graduate student Joel Tenenbaum, described by the plaintiffs as a “hardcore, habitual, long-term, persistent infringer.” The jury awarded damages totaling $675,000. “It’s a bankrupting award,” remarked Tenenbaum’s attorney, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson when asked about the number. And Joel thought paying off his grad school loans was going to be difficult. Most of the action during the trial was posted on Tenenbaum’s blog joelfightsback.com, or in real time via Twitter.

A lot has already been said about this trial, and I’m not interested in rehashing the details. However, this was certainly an important event, and there are a few things that I do want to weigh in on.

Let’s start with Joel Tenenbaum. Joel’s legal team (PR team?) has been trumpeting the slogan “Joel Fights Back” tenaciously over the course of this spectacle, painting their client as David bravely standing up to a terrible Goliath. The RIAA certainly fits the bill as Goliath – but does Joel Tenenbaum really make much of a David?

The RIAA has threatened approximately 18,000 individuals who they accuse of file sharing. They send a letter demanding settlements of up to $3,000, or, as the letters explain, they would drag them into court. I’m glad that that someone stood up to that kind of bullying and I’m happy that somebody “fought back.” I’m just not sure that this was the right case, or that Tenenbaum was the right defendant.

The Tenenbaum case has been something of a circus since well before the trial itself began. There have been all sorts of questions and allegations on both sides of the aisle as to the legality of certain witnesses and exerts, including Media Sentry, the company who captured screenshots of Tenenbaum’s computer which revealed over 800 songs in his share file. According to RIAA attorney Timothy Reynolds, as reported by Ars Technica:

Tenenbaum was a repeat miscreant, who started using Napster in 1999, turned to numerous other peer-to-peer services when the last one got shut down, and continued his infringement despite multiple warnings—including at least one from his own father—that he should stop. “Did he stop? Did he even consider it? Not at all… He actually increased both the size and scope of his infringement,” said Reynolds.

Tenenbaum apparently continued sharing music over P2P networks well into 2008. Perhaps the man thought he was proving a point, or sticking it to the man, or was simply confident that he could beat the RIAA at their own game. Or, more likely, Nesson had him convinced that his fair-use argument would make make his file sharing activity irrelevant (it was actually thrown out by the judge 8 hours before the trial even began.) Tenenbaum even admitted to lying on his written depositions. “Why did you lie at that point?” asked Nesson. “It was kind of something I rushed through,” replied Tenenbaum. “It’s what seemed the best response to give.” Why incriminate himself like that, only to then take the stand and admit to everything?

Joel Tenenbaum should have never gone to trial. Of the 18,000 people strong-armed by the RIAA there has to have been a better poster child. He was clearly guilty, which means that the only real option he and his legal team had left was to argue that the law itself is flawed. I think the law is certainly flawed in many ways, but that was never what this trial was about. So how was all of this ‘fighting back?’

As for the RIAA – I am consistently appalled by this organization in new and surprising ways as each new day passes. Is it unfair to accuse the RIAA of being a bully?

Bully – noun. A person who uses strength or power to harm or intimidate those who are weaker.
Verb. To use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone) typically to force him or her to do what one wants.”

I’d say that the word ‘bully’ paints a pretty accurate picture. Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars (where do you think that money comes from, by the way?) to take or threaten to take legal action against tens of thousands of individuals they accuse of file sharing? During the trial one of the recording industry’s lawyers was asked whether the reason for these lawsuits was to “teach people a lesson.” His answer? A simple “yes.”

What does it say about the state of the recording industry that it bankrupts it’s own listeners in order to send a message? What is the message that they are sending? “We’ll get your money, one way or another.”

During the trial the recording industry’s expert economist, Dr. Liebowitz, declared music piracy to be the ‘only reason for the fall of the music industry after 1999.” For an ‘expert’ Dr. Liebowitz appears to be severely misguided. “Piracy” – which is really not piracy at all, but rather copyright infringement – is a symptom of the music industry’s disease, not the cause. The P2P movement, for all its flaws, is in many ways simply the fans’ reaction to years of being overcharged and under-served. Platforms such as Napster could have been an opportunity for the industry to recognize and respond to the way fans wanted to get their music. Instead, they have reacted by criminalizing an entire generation of music lovers.

Maybe Joel Tenenbaum’s quest to ‘fight back’ will bear positive fruit, maybe it won’t. In my mind this trial was a lose-lose situation for the parties involved. The RIAA gets to dive ever deeper into the pit of negative publicity, and Joel Tenenbaum is out six-hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

What do you think? Do you believe Tenenbaum was right to go to trial? What are your thoughts on the RIAA, P2P or copyright in general?

Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry this week. Make sure to check out anything you might have missed and leave your comments. Know something we don’t? Submit a story.

Most Popular:

5 Reasons Why the Performance Rights Act is a Bad Idea – Is this bill really for the artists?

Why the Music Industry Still Needs Tastemakers – Sometimes ‘recommendation engines’ just don’t cut it.

Last Week

Creative Culture and the Growing Copyright Extremism – How the industry is criminalizing a generation, what they could have done instead, and how music fans can respond.

How Creative Commons can Enhance Your Business Model – Demystifying the various Creative Commons licenses.

Big New Album Releases – Several highly anticipated albums dropped last week – Check out a full list here.

How to Create a Release Strategy for the New Music Marketplace – Capitalize on the new ways fans are consuming music.

Music Video Picks:

No new videos last week, but check out out the archives.

This Week in Music History:

1975 – American singer songwriter Tim Buckley completed the last show of a tour in Dallas, Texas, playing to a sold-out crowd of 1,800 people. This was Buckley’s last ever show, he died the following day of a heroin and morphine overdose aged 28. (This Day in Music)

Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry this week. Make sure to check out anything you might have missed and leave your comments. Know something we don’t? Submit a story.

Most Popular:

Why Free Music was Inevitable - An introductory explanation of the economics behind free music.

Resurgence of Vinyl Could be Just What the Industry Needs - Why vinyl is the perfect compliment to digital music.

This Week:

Sufjan Stevens Gives Copyright to Fan Who Won’t Copy - Another innovative idea from an innovative artist. What would you do with exclusive rights to your favorite artist’s new song?

MySpace Lays Off 30% of Employees - Is the writing on the wall for the the once dominant social networking platform?

5 Reasons Why the Performance Rights Act is a Bad Idea – The latest RIAA money-grab could have significant consequences on both the broadcasting industry, and the music industry as a whole.

Creative Culture and the Growing Copyright Extremism - How the recording industry is destroying fair use.

Music Video Picks:

Phoenix – ’1901′

White Rabbits – ‘Percussion Gun’

Carina Round – ‘Backseat’

This Week in Music History:

1965, Bob Dylan recorded what would be his first ‘electric’ hit, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ which peaked at No.2 in the US and No.4 on the UK singles chart. (From Thisdayinmusic.com)

Creative culture is on the rise, thanks largely to recent technology. Anybody can shoot a video or record a song and upload it to YouTube and millions of people might see it. Digital technology has put the arts back into the hands of the people.

Copyright lawyer and chairman of Creative Commons Larry Lessig gave a presentation about a year and a half ago in which he talks about the way that the younger generation’s perception of creativity and copyright has changed since their parents’. This generation has the tools and the desire to remix, mash-up and recreate the music they hear and the videos they watch and turn them into something new. The way they appreciate art is by engaging with it and making it their own.

Lessig suggests that the law has not greeted “this new use of culture using digital technologies” with much common sense. Common sense would have been to realize that times have changed, that digital technology has fundamentally altered the way that consumers and creators alike are able to produce, enjoy and interact with art. Common sense would have been for entities like the RIAA to acknowledge that fact and adapt business practices to be remain competitive in the emerging market.

Of course, that’s not what happened. Instead, “the architecture of copyright law and the architecture digital technologies as they interact have produced the presumptionthat these activities are illegal.” Lessig continues, “because if copyright law at it’s core regulates something called ‘copies’ than in the digital world the one fact we can’t escape is that every single use of digital technology produces a copy. Every single use therefore requires permission. Without permission you are a trespasser.”

So this presumption that remixes, mash-ups, videos or any other fan created content that uses copyrighted material are illegal has made nearly an entire generation guilty of breaking the law. I love it that he uses the word presumption – this is one of the foremost lawyers on copyright saying that what the RIAA believes about copyright law is not correct.

The RIAA has seen the internet and digital technology as a threat to their business, and responded by taking an extreme position regarding copyright law. This exaggerated version of copyright all but ignores the concept of fair-use and considers – wrongly – that every use of copyrighted material is illegal.

So they crack down, launching a huge legal offensive against just about everybody, including individual consumers suspected of violating their interpretation of copyright law. This in turn creates a growing backlash – both among those whose genuinely illegal activities were thwarted, and those whose legitimate fair-use was wrongly lumped together with piracy. Now the world is experiencing a “growing copyright abolitionism” says Lessig, “a generation that rejects the very notion of what copyright is supposed to do … and believes that the law is nothing more than an ass to be ignored and to be fought at every opportunity possible. The extremism on one side begets extremism on the other – a fact we should have learned many, many times over.”

You and I can’t control the RIAA. They have proven that they are out of touch with today’s digital culture and determined to snuff out any innovation that smells like it might disrupt the traditional models. We can influence the other side of the table, though.

Artists don’t have to get in bed with the RIAA. The new independent, DIY approach to a career in music is not just a pipe dream anymore – there are plenty of success stories to look to now. In this new marketplace the artists who recognize the value of openness will be the ones who succeed. The ones who see the benefit of allowing their fans to remix their tracks, or to produce amateur videos for their songs and spread them across the Internet.

Regardless of what we have been taught to believe recently, there is such a thing as fair use, and it’s in the artist’s best interests to allow it. Release your music under a more open license such as Creative Commons and see what happens. Let your fans do the promoting – if you give them a quality product and the freedom to use it the way they want use it they’ll do a surprisingly good job. Better than you could ever do, maybe even with a big-label marketing budget that only the top acts see anyway.

Thanks to Eugenia for the video.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Performance Rights Act, it is a bill that was introduced in February that would require radio stations to pay performance royalties in addition to fees they already pay to songwriters. The RIAA, along with a few big names such as Billy Corgan (pictured), is pushing this bill under the pretense that it benefits the artists and that the industry needs it to survive.

The problem is that their claims simply are not true. The Performance Rights Act would have potentially disastrous consequences across the music business, and I’ve put together a quick list that explains why.

1. The Performance Rights Act would cripple local radio

The PRA is basically a new tax on radio stations that would be paid directly to the recording industry. This fee is already being paid by Internet, satellite and cable radio stations, and has caused the untimely demise of more than one service providor since it went into effect in 2002. What makes congress think that local radio stations will be able to avoid the same fate?

Jesse Walker of ReasonOnline also pointed out recently that the fees themselves aren’t the only costs that this bill would impose on radio stations:

“The record labels are completely out of touch as to how college radio stations operate,” Warren Kozireski, president of College Broadcasters Inc., recently complained on his organization’s website. “The extensive record keeping requirements that will be required by the Copyright Royalty Board alone will add hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to the true cost of a performance fee.” It’s relatively easy to do that book-keeping if you have a narrow playlist and rarely deviate from it, as is the case with most large commercial radio stations. But if you have a library of thousands of albums and 45s, many of which were never reissued on CD, and if you allow your DJs to choose which ones they play—or even to bring in still more music from their personal collections of rare soul or jazz or bluegrass or electronica obscurities—then tracking the data suddenly becomes a full-time job.

2. The PRA hurts independent artists

I’ve heard some supporters of this bill touting that the independent artists have the most to gain. This is because the money would go to performers and copyright owners, which in the case of independent artists are the same thing. Therefore, the PRA would provide a  potentially significant revenue stream for the artist. Right?

In a perfect world, maybe. But in this world playlists at major stations are chosen by advertising dollars, not DJs. Adding an additional fee for every song played will only make stations even more unwilling to take risks on unproven acts. Independent acts have a hard enough time getting on major stations – they don’t need another hurtle.

3. Payola

Payola, for those who don’t know, is an illegal but very common industry practice where agents of the record labels bribe radio stations to broadcast their music. As Mike Masnick of Techdirt puts it:

The most damning argument against the recording industry’s demand for money here is the fact that, for decades, the industry has (illegally) had the money go in the other direction. The system of payola has shown, quite clearly, how much the recording industry values airtime, in that it’s willing to pay radio stations to play its music.

So, can anyone explain why it’s illegal for record labels to pay radio stations to play music, but it’s okay for Congress to force radio stations to pay the record labels for playing their music? It defies common sense.

In other words, the RIAA values the promotional benefits of radio airtime so much that it’s willing to break the law and pay out large amounts of cash to get it, yet it now wants the radio stations to start paying them for the privelidge of providing  this benefit. Make sense? Didn’t think so.

4. The bill is based on misinformation

According to a recent press release by the musicFIRST Coalition - a lobby group created to push for the PRA  – Radio should pay performance royalties because it is the only platform that currently does not. They accuse brodcasters of believing that “AM and FM music radio stations should continue to get special treatment, that AM and FM music radio stations do not have to play by the rules, and that AM and FM music radio stations should enjoy a competitive advantage over other music platforms.”

The problem is that they are ignoring the fact that they were the ones who created this disparity. When the other platforms such as online streaming were required to pay performance royalties it had everything to do with controlling the reproduction of digital music – a problem not shared by terrestrial radio. As Jesse Walker points out, the industry’s argument “hinged on the idea that digital broadcasting is different from conventional broadcasting. Forteen years later, as it attempts to impose a performance fee on AM and FM broadcasters as well, the industry now wants to claim the channels are equivalent after all.”

5. The PRA doesn’t benefit musicians as much as the RIAA claims

I already talked about the ways that independent musicians would be hurt by the PRA, but what about bigger acts? The problem here is that the royalties would be paid to performers and copyright owners, which in most cases are the major record labels.

After the label takes its cut, there remains the issue of whether or not the rest of the fee will ever reach the artist. To quote Walker:

The Web radio experience is instructive. The institution that distributes performance fees to artists is SoundExchange, an organization that spun off from the Recording Industry Association of America in 2003. In 2007, the Houston Press noted that the group was apparently unable to locate about 25 percent of the performers on whose behalf it was allegedly acting. After perusing the list of lost musicians, the Press‘s John Nova Lomax reported that “in less than five minutes of Googling, I found the official Web sites and/or MySpace pages of Fito Olivares, Goudie, Mark May, the Hollisters and Los Skarnales. What’s more, highly visible people like Cam’ron (fresh off a highly-publicized appearance on 60 Minutes), Fat Joe and Danzig are on the ‘lost’ list too.”‘

Conclusion

I want artists to have the ability to make a good living creating music, but this is not the bill to make that happen. The Performance Rights Act amounts to little more than a last ditch manuever by a flailing industry. What do you think? Does the bill make sense, or will it cause more harm than good?

The RIAA is not going to be happy about the newest evolution of file-sharing technology.

BitBlinder is a free new service that claims to hide users’ IP addresses, allowing them to
use BitTorrent anonymously. There is only one reason for this, of course, and that is to
hide illegal activity from the authorities. In the words of one of its creators, “We want to
make online anonymity fast, usable and ubiquitous to the point that organisations give up
on spying and filtering us.”

In my mind, anonymous file-sharing has been an inevitability since the RIAA began demanding large sums of money from thousands of individuals under the threat of legal action. It’s a simple escalation principle – if the cops have handguns, the crooks get machine guns and around and around we go.

Many rights-holders and lobbyist groups want to fight file-sharing for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are legitimate and others are based on false assumptions. I don’t want to get too deep into that discussion right now, in part because it may be irrelevant anyway. Does the RIAA honestly think it can out-gun the filesharing community? Even more to the point – should it want to?

In a recent article I talked about the different factors that have driven the value of recorded music down to just about zero. File-sharing – although it is widely heralded by groups like the RIAA as the destroyer of music – was not on the list. Why? Because I don’t believe that file-sharing is a cause of the devaluation of recorded music so much as a byproduct of that devaluation. Digital technology has made it possible to generate nearly infinite copies of the files that now contain most of the worlds recorded music. If you can look at it objectively, that sounds a whole lot like progress.

In many ways, Filesharing simply utilizes the infinite copy-ability of digital technology to its full potential. Does that make it right? Well, under our current copyright system no, it doesn’t. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s legal. Yet it does bring up some interesting questions about progress vs. established systems.

At what point do we let go of the old and make room for new systems which are better equipped to handle today’s market realities?