Coretta Scott King (wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.) dead at 78. At least she is now reunited with her husband in a much better place and isn’t suffering anymore.

Nettwerk CEO backs music downloader

CEO Terry McBride made the surprise announcement on Friday that Nettwerk — which counts among its high-profile clients Avril Lavigne and The Barenaked Ladies — would cover the legal costs in defending Arlington, Tex., father David Greubel against a suit filed by the association last August.

The RIAA claims Greubel had 600 suspected music files on the family computer and seeks $9,000 (U.S.) in compensation for the alleged pirating of nine specific songs, including Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi.” It has dangled a settlement of $4,500 as an alternative if Greubel pays within a certain time period.

That comes out to $1000 per song ($500 per song if paid within the RIAA’s time frame). That is effing outrageous.

Emphasis mine…

“Suing music fans is not the solution, it’s the problem,” McBride said in a news release issued Friday afternoon, rather shrewdly timed to coincide with a flight home from England.

“Avril would never sue a fan, so obviously the RIAA can’t claim that they’re doing this on Avril’s behalf because she wouldn’t be suing anyone,” he elaborated yesterday from Nettwerk’s Vancouver office. “Their interests are very different than the interests of our artists.

“Nettwerk has sat in silent opposition to this policy for 18 months, but I guess this was the tipping point that kind of made us go: `You know what? We can help stop this.’”

And good on him!

I have said for a long time that downloading music isn’t going to go away, and that this is actually helping artists more than they realize. Suing fans for downloading by way of Soulseek or Bit Torrent or whatnot only exacerbates the problem; it doesn’t solve it. And while the rise of the pay version of Napster and iTunes could be considered good things, there are simply some songs that cannot be acquired with those services. What about fan-recorded concerts? Rare, unreleased songs? Albums that have been out of print for lord knows how long and are extremely hard to find? And what about unsigned artists who don’t have any other way of getting their songs heard by the masses? Or music played on the various podcasts that are out there these days? When is it going to stop?

From this piece…

Greubel’s lawyer, Charles Lee Mudd Jr., said Nettwerk’s involvement brought “a unique perspective” to the case because someone on the industry side was taking a stand against the RIAA, which purports to speak for the legal and business interests of musicians and labels.

Mudd, a Chicago attorney who has taken on several similar cases since the RIAA began its volley of lawsuits in 2003, said these cases usually wind up settling before they come to court — not just because of the legal fees but because the RIAA’s “the more you fight, the more you pay” perspective makes “the spectre of an escalating judgment” quite daunting.

Sounds like a scare tactic to me. Like, “You better settle up with us now, because if you don’t, we’ll wipe you right out…and you definitely don’t want that.”

The website P2Pnet praised Nettwerk’s decision. From this article (emphasis mine)…

“What he’s doing is really terrific,” says Jon Newton, a Vancouver Island resident who runs p2pnet.net, a digital media news website.

“This is how things should be - producers and performers working with, and for, the people who keep them alive. And it’s brilliant to see a Canadian company leading the way.”