Pirates of the Internet: Curse of the MP3

While driving into work this morning, I heard the radio DJs talking about the music industry's latest attempt to stop mp3 music file sharing and downloading -- they plan to sue individual users.

Specifically, they're going to begin slapping lawsuits today on several hundred users who have what they call "substantial collections" of MP3s on their computers. How many files constitutes substantial? They're not "sharing" that information (get it? Sharing?), which means it could be as many as a thousand or as few as fifty. Who knows. But they're talking about fines up to 150k PER FILE!

The lawsuit circus stems from a court ruling a few weeks ago requiring ISPs to provide the IDs of users suspected of illegally sharing music and movie files.

The music industry's intentions and motives here a far from secret -- they're hurting financially (album sales have dropped considerably and continue to do so). Internet file swapping has basically made music stores into ghost towns, while users make copies of the albums from the comfort of their homes.

Still, I can't help but liken this to when a drug dealer gets two years on a plea bargain, but the poor idiot addict gets thrown into the slammer for fifteen years for taking the drugs. I know, it's all illegal. I'm not denying that. But still, this means that some fifteen year old kid's parents could be mortgaging their house because their son likes downloading music a little bit too much.

Seems to me that there's two ways to go about bringing the MP3 music file sharing issue to a close. The first is simply, go after the file sharing service providers. Keep hitting the ones here in our country with lawsuit after lawsuit. Work with international allies to curtail the providers outside the US.

But more importantly -- recognize WHY this started in the first place: Absolutely ridiculous prices for music.

$18.99 for a new release album is a travesty. It's an insult. It's disgusting. It's corruption in its finest form. It's no wonder so many people have resorted to file sharing. The music industry needs to look within themselves and see that some -- not all -- of the blame for the MP3 madness lies with them.

For more info on the story,check out CNN.com.