11 December, 2006

More on RIAA, MPAA, and KAZAA

This seems to be a pretty decent blog on the RIAA, MPAA and other organizations attacking their customers.

Ray (the author of this blog) didn't seem to read the content of the third article I linked to in my weekend RIAA post but did provide some good factual context.

"After years of cat-and-mouse legal games, Zennstrom, Friis and Kazaa settled with the music industry in July for $100 million. They've rid themselves of Kazaa ownership, selling pieces in a series of legal maneuvers."

On the other hand perhaps I didn't articulate the issues in the post properly. My point was that although they had successfully settled in at least one the major cases they were in, they are apparently still being harassed. (admittedly from a different direction) This bothers me. There is no way to tell for sure but it certainly seems possible that this is a coordinated action. I would love to see someone look into who the lawyers are in the class action that Ray mentions. Are they associated with the Record Industry? If they are at the very least this is distasteful and a further example of how they are being bully's.

It is a shame that the recording industry continues to harass its most dedicated and innovative customers. If these "advocacy" organizations did their job properly then the industry's companies would see their profit margins expanding exponentially along with the growth of the Internet. Instead they choose to sue and hide their head in the sand. This is causing them to loose a lot of money.

The thing I was really stoked on was that the founder of Kazaa has set his eyes on another venue. It should be interesting to see what happens.

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