11/28/2010
One of the things that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has successfully achieved over the past weeks is what can be described as “scratching the surface” of Internet piracy. It has brought LimeWire, a file-sharing network, to shut down operations, but in reality, consumers continue downloading music from other sites. The only groups affected by LimeWire’s demise are those makers of malicious software.
Before Limewire was shut down, it was not so popular and was considered by many as a virus-spewing source, and not mainly as a resource for downloading songs and other media.
The campaign of the RIAA against Internet piracy can be considered as futile. Whenever one site is shutdown by court order, another site would simply pop up somewhere. Consumers would still continue to download songs and other media files from these new sites.
According to documents from the IRS, roughly more than $16 million legal fees were spent by the RIAA in 2008 alone. If the music industry has spent the money to support the music instead of suing customers, the money could have gotten positive results instead of achieving nothing concrete in particular.
Reality today is that not everyone is willing to pay for something that they can freely download from the Internet. In fact, even artists can self-publish and self-advertise themselves.
