If there was anyone I disliked more during my days at KRUI, it was Hillary Rosen[wiki]. Just a short time after we had established the station’s first webcast in history, I learned all about the DMCA[wiki], the RIAA[wiki], and Hillary Rosen. We were so proud to have our tiny little station getting people to listen from all over the world, only to fear the pursuit of charging incredible, per song, per person fees for our streams.
We fought where we could, contacted our representitives in congress, and staged our own “protests” like good college students do(it even got me on TV news). We just wanted to have out radio station on the web. That’s all. Play our music and be happy. And if the RIAA would have had their way, we would have been low on their radar, but the fees would have caught up sooner or later.
Today, Hillary Rosen is no longer the head of the RIAA, leaving the organization in 2003. She’s picked up blogging for the Huffington Post, and one of her latest posts offers a very intriguing view about the RIAA’s actions regarding individual lawsuits against copyright violators through file sharing networks.
But for the record, I do share a concern that the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness and that the record companies need to work harder to implemnt a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together. That is how their business will expand most quickly. [huffingtonpost]
Hello, music industry? Are you getting this???