The Recording Industry Association of America Inc is not letting up. IDG News reports that the RIAA is firing off a new wave of lawsuits and lawsuit-notification letters to users alleged to have illegally distributed significant amounts of copyright-protected music files online.The group is filing 41 new lawsuits and sending 90 lawsuit-notification letters this week, adding to the 341 lawsuits filed and 308 notification letters sent since September. The RIAA has settled with 220 file-sharers as a result of lawsuits, lawsuit-notification letters and subpoenas. In addition, 1,054 users have submitted affidavits as part of the RIAA’s amnesty program.
The party is definitely over. But while clearly the RIAA doesn’t worry too much about the negative publicity from all this, I suspect they may be winning the battle but not the war. Buying music online will not properly take off until users know that the music they buy will be nor more restricted than the CDs they buy in shops, as to where they can play, how long they play it, where they can copy it to, and whether it’s theirs to sell on to someone else. Until that happens everything between now and then is an experiment.