The RIAA is slowly learning the lessons that the PC industry learned 20 years ago with floppy disks. Remember when games came with increasingly obnoxious copy protection schemes that were still broken in minutes by pirates? The RIAA is still in the same place - or, in terms of mourning, they are still in the anger stage:

A new poll by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News found that among teens ages 12 to 17, 69 percent said they believed it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who purchased the original.

By contrast, only 21 percent said it was legal to copy a CD if the friend got the content for free. Similarly, 58 percent thought it was legal to copy a friend’s purchased DVD or videotape, but only 19 percent thought copying was legal if the movie wasn’t purchased.

The survey results angered the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. Both contend such sharing -- they call it “schoolyard piracy” -- is illegal and now a greater threat than peer-to-peer downloading.

I guess they'll start suing the 12 year old set next. Perhaps if they spent more time on their product - and less time with the lawyers - they would come to the same conclusion that the Grateful Dead came to some 30 years ago: a small level of such copying acts like viral marketing, and promotes sales of new music and of concerts.

Of course, that would require actual thought at RIAA HQ. I expect more "treat all customers like criminals" behavior instead.

Technorati Tags: DRM