Friday, February 06, 2004

Copyright Crackdown: The music industry still isn't learning. In the latest incident, Australian authorities have raided the KaZaA offices in that country for suspected copyright infringements.

Everybody who owns a computer knows that KaZaA does nothing that breaks copyright law. It's the millions of its users who trade songs and videos with the software that are breaking the rules.

But the record industry's practice of going after individual file traders has met only limited success. Sure, some reports have indicated that file sharing has gone down, as some people are scared of getting sued. But 3-million to 4-million file traders are still online at any one time using KaZaA.

As I said a few months ago, people still buy CDs and DVDs if the music or movies are any good. Trading some songs online is no different than copying music onto blank tapes, which I did when I was a kid. The problem is that the CDs are so expensive, and people can only afford to buy so many. The songs that I download are ones that I wouldn't have paid for to begin with.

The music industry doesn't have a choice. It's going to have to embrace changes in technology, because that's where people are going to look for music. All this other legal action is just a waste of time.