RIAA lawsuits — “If the goal is to reduce file sharing, it’s a failure”

Not surprisingly, no one at the RIAA wanted to get interviewed for a Wired story that shows what a miserable failure their download lawsuit program has been so far. Basically, the labels have poured millions of dollars of legal fees into this fiasco and the end result so far has been relatively meager settlements which don’t recoup their costs and only serve to try to scare off other downloaders who don’t used label-approved sites. That tactic hasn’t worked either as this type of downloading is actually increasing. And of the money from the settlements that the RIAA gets, none of it goes to the artists whose songs are involved in the case. These highly questionable lawsuits (which as the article notes may backfire when some major decisions come down soon) no doubt fuel the impression that these labels are evil and don’t deserve the business of the public. All of which means that the end result is that they’re not curbing anything. And yet another chapter in the pathetic suicide of the majors is written…