Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

More than five years after Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich became the most hated man in music after he teamed up with the Recording Industry Association of America when it sued Napster users (and Metallica fans in particular) for trading music, the RIAA is once again flexing its legal muscle and leaning on the one consumer group who — more than any other — controls its future: college kids. The new pressure is being shown in a just-launched website which allows college students to settle their lawsuits concerning the peer-to-peer sharing of music. Entitled “P2P Lawsuits,” the site is surprisingly amateurish, but still a bit creepy (the ability to settle court cases online with a credit card feels very drive-through). And yet, while this seems fairly benign compared to past efforts (if still misguided), the RIAA is also announcing that this is just the overture of what promises to be a rock-opera of measures intended to crack down on piracy. This is, of course, ridiculous; the RIAA should be mending fences with students, not trying to put them behind bars. College kids, as they have shown in the past (Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster, was — after all — a student when he invented the software that started all of this) are incredibly adept at getting around what they consider restrictive (not to mention unjust) rules regarding DRM and anti-piracy, and they’ll no doubt be staying up late in dorm rooms across the country in order to find ways to circumvent anything the RIAA puts in front of them. In terms of the “print is dead” argument, publishers should be watching this scenario very closely, with an eye towards avoiding the mistakes the RIAA seems to be serially committing.

From the NY Times: “The recording industry’s trade group will give hundreds of college students suspected of illegally sharing music online a chance to reach settlements before being sued for copyright infringement. The move announced Wednesday comes as the industry seeks to stamp out what it says is rampant music piracy on campuses.”

NY Times: Industry Pressure on Music Piracy