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Six P2P software vendors have taken a page from RIAA and formed the P2P United lobbying group. The group is taking the offensive against RIAA and is looking to educating Congress about the merits of P2P software. P2P United’s formation comes just a day before a Senate subcommittee hearing on file sharing.
“‘It is long past time for the ‘Tyrannosaurical’ recording industry to stop blaming and suing its customers to cover up the industry’s own glaring failures to adapt yet again to a new technology, one that should have already been making millions for it, and for the average artist,’ said Adam Eisgrau, P2P United’s executive director.”
RIAA’s Amy Weiss praised the group for publishing a code of conduct for it’s members adding “But, let’s face it, they need to do a whole lot more before they can claim to be legitimate businesses.” RIAA also announced the settlement of 64 individual suits with file traders and the reciept of 838 affidavits for it’s “Clean Slate” amnesty program.
P2P is not going to go away, neither are MP3’s and other similar formats, the sooner RIAA accepts this and embraces the new technologies the sooner they can capitalize on it. While there is a lot of resentment against RIAA they can still come out of this better off in the long run. Right now RIAA is doing more damage to itself and sales by targeting it’s traditionally strongest audience with legal campaigns, while the indie labels are growing in number and strength–in part because of the adoption of MP3’s and liberal downloads, and in part because of the backlash against RIAA.
In an ironic side note on a recent Google of RIAA the sole sponsored link on the results page was for P2P-Tracker “Free: Identify 260+ PSP Apps | Reduce Risk of RIAA Action | www.assetmetrix.com”
A list of RIAA related articles here…