Protecting us all from 10 year old girls:
"The latest target of the RIAA's ire is a 10-year-old girl in Oregon, who was 7 when the alleged infringement occurred, and whose disabled mother lives on Social Security. In Atlantic v. Andersen, an Oregon case that was widely reported in 2005 when the defendant counterclaimed against the RIAA under Oregon's RICO statute and other laws, the defendant's mother sought to limit the RIAA's deposition of the child to telephone or video-conference. The RIAA has refused, insisting on being able to grill the little girl in person. Here are court documents (PDF)."
Can we please just pass some legislation to protect the American people from the burden of antiquainted intellectual property laws? If the vast majority of the American people want to 'steal' music and demand that it no longer be a prosecutable offense, then let's defang the RIAA already.
I'm sure that everyone would just figure out another way to make money off of the business of music. It will sharpen the market if anything. The most successful model for a music label will involve being very localized and dedicated to a few artists' online promotional and distributional needs. And it would uplift the quality of live performances if that's where the money shifts to. Live performances put money directly into the hands of local economies. The whole paradigm of marketing and distribution has to change before we will be able to truly harness the full potential of the Internet to re-establish the importance of local economies.
It's happening now with the music industry, and as you can see it's not pretty when the dinosaurs of the old media paradigm start to fall. They'll need to grill a few young girls about their download history before they'll give up their stranglehold on OUR music.