Posted by
Husker Neocon on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 11:52:39 PM
From todays (Feb 28, 2007) Lincoln Journal Star:
"Three dozen University of Nebraska-Lincoln students are about to receive some very unhappy news in the mail.
The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday announced its latest crackdown on illegal file-sharing, an initiative that shows the bigwigs are getting serious now.
The RIAA said it’s mailed out 400 letters to students at 13 universities notifying them they’ll have 20 days to “pre-settle” or risk a costly public lawsuit.
Of the unlucky, 36 are UNL students.
The new initiative is part of an RIAA effort to curb illegal downloading on college campuses, where nationwide, students amass music and movie files by the thousand.
So far, students haven’t seemed to respond to RIAA threats of legal action. Officials hope things are about to change.
“The problem has remained acute,” said Steven Marks, executive vice president and general counsel for the RIAA.
“We look forward to the day when these lawsuits are not necessary.”
Marks would not say how much money pre-settlement would save students, only that it will be “a substantial amount.”
The RIAA needs to wake up.
These tactics are going after the very group of people that purchase the largest number of music CDs.
When the age of computers expanded, with a PC in every home, and broadband in almost all of them, people wanted to use the PCs for entertainment. They discovered that they could store their music in digital files, using very little space (MP3s). Soon, companies also realized this, and began to make MP3 players, that could hold large numbers of songs.
This is where the RIAA companies made their mistake. Instead of embracing the concept, and providing music for sale at low cost, they fought any attempt to do so. The RIAA companies sued MP3 player manufacturers. They sued web sites. They sued everyone. And when they allowed someone to sell music online, you had to attach horrible copy protection that made the songs playable on one computer, and one type of device. You couldn't load the same song on your laptop that you had stored on your home desktop.
Now, music sales are steadily declining. Music companies profit immensely from the sale of each CD, yet the artists make a fraction.
Now is the time for the record companies to turn a new leaf, and do what they should have from the start.
Offer songs for sale for under a dollar (50 cents would be a great amount). Offer the songs in multiple formats. And do away with the copy protection.
At 50 cents a song, they couldn't build robust enough servers to handle the traffic. Songs would be of better quality, and more people would buy them. Most people don't like the idea of illegally downloading music. Make it affordable and easy, and everyone will pay.