It’s a world gone crazy. The RIAA/MPAA are saying things which actually make sense.

In a trial between the RIAA and alleged file-sharer Jammie Thomas, Thomas’ lawyer argued that the RIAA’s evidence showing records of Thomas sharing songs over Kazaa is inadmissible, because recording the IP addresses and packets sent over the Internet is akin to wiretapping, which is illegal. The RIAA’s lawyers responded that by design, computers *must* record the IP addresses of any packets sent to it, so that they can respond to it. The analogy is with postal service, where if you send me a letter requesting that I send an mp3 to you, I must take note of your return address in order to actually send you the mp3. If we extend the wiretapping laws to apply to computer networks, the lawyers (correctly) argued, then the Internet would cease to function at all.

I have nothing against the RIAA/MPAA per se. Instead, my loyalties lie with “truth” and “justice”, and in the past the RIAA/MPAA seemed to be going against these ideals. But in this particular argument, they are siding with these ideals, and thus I side with them. Thomas’ lawyer, Kiwi Camara, seems to be trying every single possible tactic to win the case. I guess that’s “normal” for lawyers, but it’s when he resorts to “dishonorable” tactics like the wiretapping one mentioned above, it makes me lose a lot of sympathy for Thomas’ case. And I suspect a lot of power that the file-sharers have against the RIAA/MPAA comes from sympathy from the general public.

As an aside, the judge who is handling the case, Michael Davis, seems like a very thoughtful and fair person. When the RIAA’s lawyer screws up filing their evidence (their certificates proving ownership of the copyright weren’t the originals or something), he doesn’t let them get away with it. But when Thomas’ lawyer screws up filing their evidence, he doesn’t let him get away with it either (there are rules before using a “fair use” defense, and he didn’t follow them). Commenting of the first case in which the RIAA won, Davis wrote:

While the Court does not discount Plaintiffs’ claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has far-reaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs—the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000—more than five hundred times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs…

Fortunately, he also didn’t buy Camara’s wiretapping argument either. Kudos to this judge. All too often, I read about a misinformed judge making decisions which have technological implication (e.g. on the Internet as a whole) without understanding or realizing it.

Okay, so that’s the RIAA. What has the MPAA done or said that was perfectly reasonable, causing shock and confusion worldwide? At the world copyright summit, vice president Fritz Attaway said:

We’ve got to do more of [what online video site Hulu is doing]. We live in an age where we cannot block access to our content. People are going to get it one way or the other. We would like them to pay for it and we need to seek out ways where they can pay for it. But just saying ‘no’ isn’t the answer.

I had this black-and-white mental model of the RIAA/MPAA being this “evil” corporation; unable to adapt, because its whole business model (being middlemen between artists and consumers) is rendered totally obsolete by the Internet, and so would fight tooth and nail until its inevitable decay and death. But it looks like there might be hope for them yet.

Will the RIAA/MPAA actually adapt their business model to be compatible with the Internet age? Will the company be completely transformed, coming up with new, unrelated sources of revenue, essentially ceasing to exist except in name? I wrote earlier that the stigma associated with videogames will disappear as the Gen-Xers come into power; will a similar thing happen with copyright reform laws? Is the growth of Sweden’s Pirate Party a sign of the Gen-Xer’s growth in power?