Why the RIAA will sue everyone….but you

ACCORDING TO News.com the RIAA has sued the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners for its investment into Napster. The logic is pretty simple—Napster was used to steal music, Hummer knew it was being used to steal music and invested into it, making Hummer criminally liable for damages. I suppose the other logic to this sort of move is that its hard to squeeze more money out of a dead company, so suing a live venture capital firm makes more sense.

Now that the RIAA has widened the potential lawsuit field to include backers of file sharing services, one might think it was only a matter of time before they came after the most logical targets—the end users themselves. After all, we're (excuse me—YOU'RE) the ones stealing the music, listening to it, swapping it, and ripping it. Going after the file sharing networks themselves is like attempting to end drug trafficking by destroying the swap houses where trades take place but doing nothing about the network of buyers and sellers. Crushing Napster didn't kill file trading, it only created a dozen clones. Killing Kazaa won't end things either. It may take a month or six, but a new service (with better anonymity and even more shielding) will eventually come online. So how long until the RIAA wises up and sues individuals?

Probably never. Instead we see them backing educational initiatives and mailed letters, all under the premise that people don't know they are stealing. Question is, does this premise make sense? Its hard to imagine in the post-Napster age that people don't realize that downloading a few gigabytes of music off Kazaa is theft. You can argue that people don't think ripping songs to play on an MP3 player is theft (and there's little reason they should, past the RIAA's desire to sell yet more music) but does anyone REALLY believe that the giant collection of unpaid, unlicensed music sitting on their hard drive is legal? And more to the point, even if informed that it isn't, would they do anything about it?

Again, probably not. So why hasn't the RIAA targeted end users? Granted there's not much money to be squeezed out of them, but you could make some excellent examples and destroy a few lives all in the name of more profit to the record industry. There's only one problem…

The RIAA knows (or seems to) that targeting individuals is the fastest way to suicide there is. The fact is, the average file swapper doesn't see himself or herself as a thief in the same way that a shoplifter is a thief (even if they know what they are doing is stealing). Furthermore there are precious few Americans willing to sanction seven digit awards to the music industry from the pockets of people who copied a few songs. Should the RIAA choose to begin attacking consumers in earnest it would likely find the backlash to be catastrophic. Since that, in turn, is not acceptable, we have the current situation where the RIAA will sue everyone BUT the actual thieves.

Consumers are a funny lot. Individually, we're powerless against a large corporation—but when the sleeping dragon is awakened, companies rise and fall based on its whims. Its like being bound to the will of a bratty, drowsy four-year-old who has the complete capability to shatter your business if it ever decides it wants to do so—but most of the time is too sleepy / bored to make the effort.