While Hilary Rosen was RIAA's former Chairman and CEO,
she has often been accused of getting involved in suing
college students and other potentially innocent people for the unauthorised sharing of copyrighted music. However, she has made it clear that it was not until after she left that the RIAA actually began targeting individuals.
During her time with the RIAA, their focus was targeting those who were involved in profiting from piracy such as those who's business involves pirating music. She then went on to mention that she honestly would not have known what to do when it came to suing individuals should she have stayed on, however she did participate in multiple planning and debate sessions about the lawsuits and mentioned about how most successful executives she knows have made controversial decisions.
Finally,
she does feel concerned about how the lawsuits against individuals currently taking place as they are no longer as they have outlived their usefulness and that the record companies needs to start working on alternative measures such as creating legitimate file sharing sites and helping music services work better with portable music players. For example, she pointed out how Apple's proprietary DRM is a problem and that DRM itself is not the proper strategy for online music distribution.
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I don't honestly know what I would have done about the individual lawsuits had I stayed. I certainly participated in multiple planning and debate sessions about them. There were good arguments on both sides and the staff at the RIAA are thoughtful, good people who work hard to protect their constituency. Thankfully my plan to leave was firmly in place and I didn't have to make that tough call or take the heat for the one that was made. The full Huffington Post article can be read here. |
The RIAA would probably have been better off taking all of its resources it currently uses to target individuals and use them on organisations that pirate music for profit, particularly since consumers are more likely to buy music after hearing it from a file sharing network than if they bought a pirated copy.
Finally, locking all forms of music distribution online with DRM is not the
answer either to cutting piracy either. It would be nice if they helped
run a trial music download service which offers music in MP3, particularly since
they could easily stop the trial should it turn out to be a failure. As
the vast majority of music in shops is already available on file sharing
networks, there is actually no real point in crippling music from
online services in DRM, since consumers who wish to download music from P2P
instead will find a shared version anyway.
Source: Huffington Post
