Digital Journal — Brace yourselves, file-sharers. You’re under attack once again. The music industry has launched 8,000 lawsuits worldwide in an attempt to curb online piracy and encourage legal media purchases.
Here we go again. This time around, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents various music companies, filed lawsuits against people in 17 countries, including the first ones ever in Brazil, Mexico and Poland.
The IFPI said more than 20 billion songs were illegally downloaded last year. In response, the frustrated music industry has filed about 18,000 lawsuits in the U.S. and 13,000 in the rest of the world.
The IFPI said they targeted mainly parents whose children had been illegally file-sharing. The criminal and civil suits were trying to find “uploaders” who placed copyrighted songs onto file-sharing networks.
John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI, told Reuters he envisions a bumpy road ahead for the music industry. “It’s not getting easier but we are encouraged enough by the results to keep on going,” he said. “It will never go away completely.”
Exactly. So why is the music industry going against what the public wants, instead of force-feeding them their legal-download strategy? It’s high time the corporate culture begins to understand the public culture, where free music has become ingrained into our society. Getting sued doesn’t put the music companies under any kind of halo; in fact, lawsuits make people angry. They make people start to hate who’s suing them.
If the IFPI wants to play the villain, they’re already winning an Oscar. As the Black Eyed Peas would croon, where is the love? And where is the basic need for adapting with the times? The music business should stop harkening for simpler times when people bought bubble-gum singles and forked over their paycheque for Tool box sets. Instead, music fans should be treated with respect, rather than as criminal suspects.
