Record industry scores a Pyrrhic victory

Posted Oct 5th 2007 2:28PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Law, Consumer Experience, Rants and Raves, Competitive Strategy

There's an old saying about getting into a fight with a lady: "If you lose you lose, and if you win you lose."

Well, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has won a battle with a 30-year old single mother from Minnesota. A federal jury ordered the woman the woman to pay $222,000 in damages for sharing 24 songs on online file-sharing platform Kazaa -- That's $9,250 per song.

"She was in tears. She's devastated," the woman's attorney attorney, Brian Toder, told The Associated Press. "This is a girl that lives from paycheck to paycheck, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life."

The actual judgment could come in closer to half a million dollars, because she will also have to pay the RIAA's attorney's fees.

While this is an important symbolic victory for the industry, you have to hope that they will let this poor woman off the hook. In addition to its financial struggles, the industry is also reeling from angry consumers and upset artists. Demonstrating some compassion toward a single mother could go a long way towards building some goodwill.

But if the industry does decide to play hardball with this woman, they may find out that, in the long run, this victory is actually a major loss.

Tags: CD, downloads, inthenews, law, litigation, music, piracy, RIAA

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-05-2007 @ 3:06PM

margaret Callinan said...

I wont buy recordings if this org. continues taking shots at this individual. I'll find another way to hear the music. I may have to compromise - and that's alright. Simple as that for meeeee. (Thaaaattsss Liiifffe...ahhhh, sing da song.) I recycle too. I dont support bullies.

10-05-2007 @ 5:00PM

Mike said...

The RIAA lost me as a customer long time ago but this should finish them off. Before the napster decision I bought more CDs than I ever had in my life becuase I was able to hear new music instantly from all over the world. Now if that's not the best PR machine in history, what is? And Fanning literally dumped it in their laps. And they've acted like it was a bushel of cobra's ever since. People that stupid don't get my money, I'll download, whistle, rip - whatever to not pay any money to them. But this is the absolute pits. You showed us alright. Showed us you'll make a single mother pay half her paycheck to a bunch of do-nothing Armani-wearing morons who've ripped off artists and consumer for years. You wanna fight fair, come after all of us! All however millions of us there are -- ruin your entire customer base. You mopes are the dodo bird of the entertainment industry. Your style of selling music died half a decade ago and you're too damn dumb to even know it.

10-05-2007 @ 5:00PM

grymes said...

Boycott the music industry. It wouldnt take long at all for them to feel the impact. Just start buying music from Independent Artists directly. Even If you just download 1 less song from iTunes everymonth for a year, or dont get that cool new ringtone, they will feel it. I Promise.