Kennedy went on to say that he had very little sympathy for the 12 year old victim of RIAA lawsuits who lived in a New York housing project. He called her a "serious file-sharer". Her family ended up paying thousands of dollars in a settlement to the RIAA. He even has less sympathy for songwriters, who receive a very small fraction of the royalties that recordings owners receive saying that it was fair as hits were down to investment in marketing. He said he would be more sympathetic to songwriters the day that labels had 50 per cent margins.
He also went ahead to claim that record labels were still needed stating that no unsigned bands had been broken by the Internet. This leads to only one conclusion, that he's not very familiar with the technology used in file-sharing on the Internet. As file-sharing progresses it seems likely that sites will spring up to aid in the distribution over P2P of music from unsigned artists, that is until of course the IFPI and RIAA try to convince Governments that these services are evil.
Source:
The Register
Written by: James Delahunty @ 23 Sep 2004 18:09
