RIAA subpoenas illegal; Kazaa not

At long last, there's a bit of balance being restored in the whole music 'piracy' debate. According to the BBC, The RIAA are going to have to think of a different tactic now that Verizon have successfully challenged their subpoenas demanding the names and addresses of Verizon customers. No names and addresses, no charges – the RIAA will have to find a different way to beat the crap out of the consumer.

And the Dutch courts have ruled that Kazza isn't illegal as the software company is not responsible for what end-users do with their products.

Finally!

Now what we need is for the music (and movie) industry to embrace downloading as a new marketplace, to provide us with good quality files for download at a reasonable price with no DRM restrictions, and maybe, just maybe that might have an impact on the number of free download people make.

I hate calling individual downloads 'piracy' – to me piracy is something that organised criminals do when they rip off a new CD, get thousands printed up and then flog them at your local market.

Individual people downloading music for their own enjoyment aren't in the same league, nowhere near. They want good music at a reasonable price now, and they want to listen to it when, where and however they like. They don't want to be told what they can and can't do, and they don't want to be ripped off.

Until the music industry reaslises that consumers everywhere feel like they've been had every time they buy a CD, which they know was made for just pence; that they will no longer wait weeks for uncommon albums to turn up in their local record store on import for an extortionate fee; and that they don't want to risk their hard-earned on an album by a band that's had only one single out… until then the industry wakes up to those facts, it is going to be fighting a losing battle.

Consumers know that the artists get hardly anything for their efforts and that only a small minority of acts (usually the worst pop shite on the market) are ever going to make a decent living out of music. We know that bands these days get little or no support, and are dropped the second there's a threat of a fall in popularity. We know that most of the money goes to the bean counters. Why should we feel any sort of loyalty to companies who are ripping off not only us, but the people we respect – the musicians?

The irony is that downloading could be the saviour of the music industry, and it could benefit the smaller and less profitable bands just as much as the larger more popular acts, if not more so, if only the record labels had the strength of character to grasp the nettle and provide a reliable, DRM-free paid alternative to Kazaa or SoulSeek.

I live in the Arseendofnowhere, as you all well know. If I had a decent modem and the opportunity to download, say, The Shins' new album Chutes Too Narrow for a reasonable price, (i.e. cheaper than a CD – after all, you're saving all that money in physical media, packaging and distribution) I'd do it. I'd pay for it. Yes, I could get the CD online, but it's gonna take ages to get here and the chance of my local record shop knowing who The Shins are is negligable (they barely know who The Darkness are, bless their little rural socks). If I could set my computer to download it legitimately, that would be ideal.

But the industry has wimped out, chosing to sulk in the corner of the playground, whining that the rest of us aren't playing the game properly and that they're going to take their ball home if we're not nice and say sorry.

Tough shit. Downloads aren't going away. It's up to the industry to make us an offer so good that we can't refuse, because we aren't going to stop downloading any time soon.