MORE JOY OVER ONE SINNER WHO REPENTS

We're constantly banging on about how suing people into compliance with the RIAA rules is a doomed policy, and how larding DRM onto downloads is another blind alley.

Imagine our surprise to discover former head of the RIAA, Hilary Rosen, agrees with us:

But for the record, I do share a concern that the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness and that the record companies need to work harder to implemnt a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together. That is how their business will expand most quickly. The iPod is still too small a part of the overall potential of the market and its propietary DRM just bugs me. Speaking of DRM, it is time to rethink that strategy as well....

Interestingly, though, her attack on DRM seems to be merely a beef with Apple's version of it - surely you're either against DRM, or you're not; quibbling over who holds the keys seems a bit odd. "Music wants to be free - to choose to be hobbled by Microsoft's DRM instead of Apple's" isn't much of a slogan; clearly, Rosen's attacks on iTunes dominance is driven by her special interests. She's still close to her friends in the major labels, who hate that Apple is able to dictate prices online; and according to her Huffington blog biography "[s]he currently consults with various companies on digital distribution and consumer strategies for entertainment products." Not, of course, that she'd use her blog as a bid to help out the "entertainment product" companies she works for.

And what of Rosen's turning against lawsuits? She claims her RIAA never went about suing individuals:

Commenters on this site regularly accuse me of suing college students and other "innocents" in my past role as Chairman and CEO of the Recording Indsutry Assciation of America The lawsuits against individuals initiated by the RIAA was started after I left. When I was there, our litigation focus was on those who were bulding commercial businesses on the backs of the creative community without their agreement or participation.

Really, Hill? Don't the current RIAA team insist that they, too, aren't suing students or innocents, but focusing on evil mass-uploaders?

More to the point, the mechanisms for the individual lawsuits were already in place when Rosen was sitting on the biggest chair. Indeed, the week Rosen stepped down in January 2003, the RIAA was in court trying to get the name of an individual Kazaa user coughed up by Verizon. Now, it's possible that they only came up with the idea of doing this after they'd had the whip-round for her going-away party, but it seems unlikely. And maybe Rosen's RIAA just wanted this information in order to send a flier about cheap CD-R deals, but again, it seems unlikely.

Equally odd, of course, is that Rosen's RIAA heartily lobbied for Congress to pass the DMCA, one of the key provisions of which was to make it easier for copyright holders to pursue individual transgressors. Although it now turns out she was never intending to do so.

Rosen does admit that she "participated in multiple planning and debate sessions about" individual lawsuits but pleads that my plan to leave was firmly in place and I didn't have to make that tough call. But the implication is that nothing was done on the plans while she was at the helm.

Apart from hassling ISPs and dragging Verizon into court. Indeed, had Verizon not put up a fight and just handed over the name straight away, the lawsuits would have been ready to roll much earlier - before Hilary got the "Sorry you're leaving us" card.

Funny how she never mentioned her misgivings about all this earlier.

music riaa hilary rosen