The Music Empire Strikes Back?

Seeing news like this gives me a feeling of watching Music Star Wars. The beleaguered musical giants are doing their best to take out an itch they can hardly scratch: peer-to-peer software providers.

FRAMINGHAM - Eight music publishers have sued LimeWire LLC of massive copyright infringement, even as a federal court in New York is considering a request by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to shut the file-sharing software maker down over a similar complaint.

The music publishers’s lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges LimeWire with facilitating “pervasive online infringement” of music copyrights.

Source: Music industry hits LimeWire with yet another lawsuit

The same news can be found at the Philippine Daily Inquirer: Music publishers file copyright suit against LimeWire
How can LimeWire be accused of illegally selling something when, technically, they're just the messengers? Ahem. Peer-to-peer software providers are guilty of only one thing: empowering the software users to "steal" music. Gosh, I prefer at this point not to get into the gray areas of this situation. All I can see is a great global deluge.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, technology has put the music industry into something which I can only compare to the global flood during Noah's time. How can they define tariffs when there are no more boundaries? The entire framework for doing business in music needs to change.

I wish I know how. Meantime, we can only watch people grasping at straws. It's not an amusing sight.