Punknews.org had an interesting report a few days ago on accusations against last.fm, regarding the site reporting specific users who had accessed an illegal early copy of the upcoming U2 record to the RIAA.

Now, regardless on where you stand on the issue of whether or not people with musical taste should be listening to U2, this is an interesting tidbit of news. Last.fm responded with this;

“Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we’d never personally identify our users to a third party – that goes against everything we stand for.”

Read more after the jump.

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Five years ago, the RIAA began what’s been seen as one of the major 21st-century witchhunts.  That being, of course, their rash of personal lawsuits against individuals involved in peer-to-peer music sharing. Wired.com has an interesting look at the arguably infamous monumental crusade, and exactly where it stands right now. Wired argues that despite the power and influence that the organization has and uses to essentially extort settlement fees out of people who would rather avoid legal fees and court, the campaign itself is an utter an expensive failure.

Is it? Consider the continued existence of peer-to-peer music sharing despite the lawsuits, only one of which, against Jammie Thomas of Minnesota, has been successful. And even then a retrial is in consideration, so you have to wonder just how long the RIAA are going to consider keeping this up before either a radical new model for music sharing and distribution comes up, or end up suing everyone in America.

Wired.com has an interesting story listing some of the most elaborate and infamous attempts by the major labels at preventing music piracy over the years.  Some of the tactics are quite inventive but ultimately pretty laughable.  If I had to do some of that shit for a CD to review, I’d probably pirate it just out of spite.  Although, I feel bad that some poor intern probably had to sit there and superglue a dozen or more Discmans closed after putting a copy in and then ship them out.  

On June 12th, the Canadian Minister on Industry Jim Prentice introduced the passing of Bill C-61, a law that makes it illegal in Canada to break “digital locks” (DRM, aka Digital Rights Management, technology) on copywritten material.  C-61 is being compared to the American DMCA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), a law passed in 1998 that allows for legal action to be taken at the discretion of copyright holders against those who’d use copywritten material without consent.

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Word on the street is that major label group EMI is planning to cut its connections to both the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) as well as record-industry mainstay the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) over what it’s seeing as nothing more than a massive drain of money in a loosing battle against downloading and music piracy.

The IFPI and RIAA are, for those of you who don’t know, essentially the enforcing arm of the Big 4 in the recording industry (such as EMI) though they both officially claim to be representing the music industry in the US in general. Both groups receive about $130 million apiece a year from the labels in funding, and of course, that gets us results like the RIAA suing children, comatose patients, and the elderly who let their kids use their computers.

It’s an interesting industry event because it represents, among other things, an admission in the total fuckup-ery (yes, that is a real word…at least for now) of the state of the music industry by EMI, who incidentally were recently the first label to release music digitally through iTunes without DRM (Digital Rights Management, software and other lovelies built into the music file to prevent it being shared once you download it, or being transferred somewhere else like onto a blank CD-R).

So what exactly does this all mean? Well, it’s a step. You have to wonder what the face of buying music in the US (and frankly, the world in general thanks to the internet) is now going to look like. The issues over the RIAA suing people for up to $1,000 a downloaded song and people simply not buying music because of the effects that new DRM software will have on their computers at home are now far more flexible than they were four or five years ago when the RIAA began its legal crusade against individual users. Reuters is pointing out that the answer is plain and simple.

Money. FAT CASH! Besides the obvious public relations nightmares that these sorts of individual cases bring onto the major-label record industry, they quite frankly, are literally not worth it. Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG’s head of litigation recently admitted during a court case (Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas) going on in Duluth, Minnesota that these sorts of suits cost the industry money because lawsuits are not income. They are not meant to reap literal repayment, but rather serve as punitive damage to the person sued.

Which basically means that it’s the RIAA trying to hurt you rather than get back what it “lost. ” Classy, right? I know, I can  barely contain my admiration either, its’ just overflowing here.

Thanks to Reuters, Punknews.org, and ARS Technica.