Obama, The RIAA, & You

So Ian Gershengorn, a RIAA-connected lawyer, has been tapped to join the Justice Department by President Barack Obama. This marks the fifth lawyer with RIAA ties appointed by the President, and Gershengorn was a member of the law firm Jenner & Block, a law firm that recently told a Judge that Obama supported upholding high monetary damages in cases related to peer-to-peer file sharing.

Gershengorn isn’t the only one of the block of lawyers tapped to support similar decisions in various cases that have been going on these days.

Read more after the jump.

What does this news mean to you?

Well, for one thing, if this article that I just read at Wired.com is true, then the Justice Department is now stacking the Justice Department, which in the past few years has begun to more aggressively pursue individual cases against individuals, to maintain a status quo of government backing the music industry against consumers.

And while this actually does expand to cover downloading beyond the music industry, especially with the increased focus against movie piracy, it’s another blow in what is arguably being interpreted as a “silent” war in music. These appointments are just another indication that the government and the mainstream industry still have little bearings on just how technology is affecting the entertainment industry. The same old “blows” are not going to work if you’re not going to adapt and admit that there are just some battles that can’t be won.

Whether or not anyone in the government is actually listening remains to be seen, especially since they haven’t bothered to realize that, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not like the mainstream industry is specifically dying and bleeding money.

If anyone was, post-November 2008, looking for some sort of massive changes in “the way things were done” then you, ladies and gentlemen, are in for a bit of shock.

So, does this mean that I can start yelling “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” really loudly?