iHollywood

RIAA to juice Limewire

Fresh off its recent settlement with Kazaa requiring the service go legit and pay $115 million to the RIAA, the RIAA filed suit against Limewire's parent company Lime Group LLC. The RIAA claims that the service allows for the company to make money off illegal piracy.

It is reasonable to expect that the RIAA will again find victory and ensure the closure or legitimization of another P2P service currently being used for illicit means. What happens next remains to be seen. With many of the biggest file sharing services closed, will new ones appear to replace them or will the market scatter so much that users do not have one service to flock to? If so, will this effectively end P2P piracy?

Ultimately the closure of these services will help to thwart casual and moderate pirates. The hardcore who want to illegally obtain music will continue to find ways to do so. Instead, the RIAA needs to continue its anti-piracy education effort, policies against illegal physical format distribution in the US and abroad, and help the online music industry create flexible usage models that limit the perceived need for piracy. These efforts should help to further curb illegal file sharing and develop usage models that help propel the music industry into the future, assuming no further rootkit scandals emerge.

Kazaa's Bad Day

Kazaa, a file sharing service that has long been a thorn in the side of the recording industry due to the availability of copyrighted music and movies on the service, has been fined $100M which will be paid to the big four labels; Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI, and Warner Music.

The settlement also requires that Kazaa go legit right away. The large fine may prove enough of a deterrent for other file sharing companies to re-evaluate their businesses. Perhaps some will close down while others will do a better job filtering uploaded content to prevent copyrighted material from being shared. This is a step in the right direction but not the end game.

The real accomplishment is the closure of one major contributor to the illegal distribution of copyrighted content. It is unreasonable for the RIAA and other record labels to expect that new file sharing services will not continue to pop up as others are closed down. It is incumbent on them to pursue the offenders but it is equally important to create compelling, flexible, legal alternatives to acquire content with the same ease of which illegal can can be found and shared amongst devices. Doing so will truly help prevent the casual pirate from stealing content. While the avowed downloader may never switch, those are individual fish the RIAA should pursue next.