JAPANESE COURTS LET RIAA TELL THEM WHAT TO DO

The Tokyo high court has rejected an appeal against its earlier findings against the company which ran Filerouge, which has given local RIAA client RIAJ a great big stiffy. They say they:

will continuously take drastic measures against .. illegal use of music on the Internet that corrupts the ‘cycle of music creation’ and leads to decline of the music culture."

Now, we're sure anybody from Celine Dion upwards might be able to put together an argument that music in 2005 is much more vibrant and a much healthier culture than it was back in, say, 2000, before file sharing really caught on, but these things are about copyright law, not truth.

MMO have been ordered to pay getting on for 37 million yen to RIAJ members. We're still waiting to hear how much of that will actually find its way into the music culture, and how much will go on shareholders and brass doorknobs for the boardroom.

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