Chaos Magnet

RIAA shoots itself in the foot

The RIAA is preparing for an even more massive onslaught of lawsuits against individual file sharers. One so-called "pirate" is challenging the subpoena of her records, but probably won't get far. The Electronic Frontier Foundation will let you search to see if you're being subpoenaed. The database has 1145 subpoenas at the time of this writing. The effect? According to this SFGate article, "an independent digital media industry analyst, said the 'fear factor' caused usage of file-sharing programs to drop about 22 percent in the seven weeks after the RIAA announced its plans to sue individuals." So that's a victory for the RIAA, right?

Well, not exactly. "Yet Leigh noted industry sales reports show the drop in CD sales accelerated during the same period." In other words, they've pissed off their customers. Basically, people are saying, "I'm not going to buy your product anyway."

It's sad, really. I used to think file sharing was great, because I'm one of those people who would actually listen to the music and then buy it. But I've seen my son's generation adopt an "everything's free" mind-set, which is wrong too.