More Evidence Against the RIAA

For some time on this blog, we have been railing against the Draconian too-far-behind-the-times efforts of the RIAA collectively and several Record companies individually to attack downloaders and file sharers.  This attack-the-fans approach should have been replaced a long time ago with a new paradigm. The industry needs to ask how it can work with fans to bring them music in a way that makes sense to them, rather than sue them.

The software and techniques used by the  industry to search and catch these alleged pirates of the Internet seas on services such as BitTorrent have a little problem, they implicate computers and users who are not file sharing.  According to a report released today by University of Washington researchers, the tools used by the music industry actually give many false positives which implicate users who have not engaged in what is defined at the moment as illegal downloading.

So what will be the industry response?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Oh, oops.  Our bad.  Sorry.
2. Here's the new New Kids on the Block CD, now is all forgiven? Do you want tickets to a reunion show too?
3. We are the music industry, we do not make mistakes!
4. We do not understand music downloading therefore we must fear it.  Burn the evil sorcery, burn it!  BURN IT!
5. We have now announced plans to sue the authors of the study saying our methods target innocent computers and users. 
6. <Say Nothing> ...and keep doing what they are doing...

I wonder which one they will choose?