Pay for Play No, I'm not talking about the Tee Martin scandal at UT, although that seems to have faded rather wquickly anyway. According to this story in USATODAY, Kazaa is offering a plan to compensate copyright holders for songs swapped on their service. Kazaa offers a service similar to Napster, except that there is no central server for record companies to shut down, so they have escaped prosecution thus far. Their plan:
An unlikely alliance of swap-service Kazaa and telephone and Internet giant Verizon is floating a proposal to break the logjam of lawsuits: Computer manufacturers, blank CD makers, ISPs and software firms such as Kazaa will pool funds and pay artists directly.
And like Sarah Deutsch says in the article, "It's hard to get the genie back in the bottle."
People are going to swap. The RIAA needs to join the information age, and get with the program. They spent millions shutting down Napster, and more people are downloading music now than ever before.
This certainly makes more sense than the truly awful legislation introduced a few weeks ago.
Posted by Rich at May 16, 2002 6:51 AM