Lawsuits to End?
The Wall Street Journal reports that the RIAA is planning to end its controversial anti-piracy strategy of filing copyright infringement lawsuits against any and all small time possible infringers, including young teenagers who send copies of favorite songs to friends.
The Associated Press adds more info to the announcement, but finds reason to doubt whether the RIAA has actually ceased filing lawsuits, as it claimed.
Meanwhile, the RIAA continues to report steadily dropping sales figures for the record industry. Currently, it claims that while digital sales are climbing, they are increasing more slowly than the decline in physical product sales, so that the overall sales figures are, in fact, dropping. The implication has always been that illegal file sharing and digital piracy was the primary cause of the slump in sales, and that there was a more or less direct correlation between the two.
HAH! What about the fact that more independent music became available to consumers at the same time as technology was making digital piracy possible? Perhaps the illegally swapped files weren’t cutting into sales at all (I’ll often take something offered free even if I would never have bought it with my own money)? Perhaps the cut in sales to the large RIAA represented companies is merely a by-product of consumers buying more music from indie labels and artists themselves? Perhaps more indie music is being purchased because the RIAA companies have not adjusted to what their target consumers want, but have merely whined about not selling more of the bland-uninteresting-because- it’s-the-same-as-the-last-fifity-albums -they-put-out-product that these companies are offering?
Huh? What about that?
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