The final chapter in the illegal music download saga -- fow now:
LOS ANGELES — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers' access if they ignore repeated warnings.
The RIAA sued around 35,000 people for sharing copyrighted music online.
While pirating music is clearly illegal, the RIAA and Metallica waaaay overreacted. I always believed that record sales in the last ten years declined due to, you know, the industry releasing a lot of crappy music -- the result of corporate group-think and an utter lack of risk taking that saturates the broader entertainment industry. The cash spent on legal action would've been better invested on innovation. All that said, I was able to exploit the whole thing for its comedy gold.
Adding... On a related note, can the record companies please stop disabling the embed feature on YouTube? It's ridiculous and pointless. And it makes choosing a Morning Awesome every day even more difficult. We blogotubers want to promote your stuff for free, record companies. Why do insist on making it harder for us?