August 2003 marks the start of the recording industry’s unprecedented litigation campaign against its own customers, i.e. against music fans for using P2P file-sharing software to swap music over the Internet.The goal of these lawsuits “is an important part of the larger strategy to educate file-sharers about the law” In the words of the RIAA, the lawsuits are intended to also “encourage music fans to turn to legitimate services”.

By April 2006, RIAA’s initiative was aimed on university computer networks or aiming towards a whole new generation of music fans. Once upon a time, college students used to be the music industry’s best customers. Sounds like a great marketing ploy, suing your best customer.

I remember when CD-RW drives first appeared, the RIAA was lobbying for vendors of CD-RW drives to conduct background checks and require a 3 day waiting period before the drive can be sold. The RIAA President Hilary Rosen liken CD-RW to be “a dangerous weapon when it falls into the wrong hands” and goes on saying that “You wouldn’t sell a gun to a convicted felon”. I never knew the severity of my music listening habits could draw comparison to shooting a gun!

What’s next?

So what about authorized music services like Apple’s iTunes Music Store? iTunes announced in January 2007 that more than 2 billion songs, 50 million television episodes and over 1.3 million feature-length films have been purchased and downloaded from iTunes. This sounds very impressive until it is held up against 5 billion files that move across the Kazaa networks (ONLY) every month back in 2004. Not to mention, the lawsuits meant to educate us file sharers has only led to a growing audience where traffic on peer-to-peer networks has nearly doubled since 2002.

When will RIAA ever embrace Internet?