If your name is John Doe, you might be in trouble. RIAA is back at it again, trying to attract more customers by suing their existing ones. (Great new business model, btw).
I have a whole tirade against RIAA that I promise I will share soon, but for now I have something I want to state for the record. MP3’s suck. They really do. Even at 256 KB/sec they still suffer from a loss in quality (and at that size, they are often too big to trade). They are today’s version of an 8-Track except they don’t puke their guts out. The cool thing about holding this opinion is that online music trading, at least the kind RIAA is looking for, holds absolutely no appeal to me.
However, I am a heavy online music trader. The difference is that I collect and trade live shows from Bands That Allow Taping. (Who, btw, shun lossy formats like mp3’s.) Yes, did you know that even existed? Some bands actually allow their fans to record them live, and then trade those live tapes/cd’s for free. And while a great many names on the list of the attached link are unknown, there are some surprises. (To find out more, check out etree.org.)
I’m sure I look like a target to RIAA and their lawyer goons since my IP address probably saw over 20 GB going up and down in the last month. And the prospect of spending tons of money to defending my legitimate trading scares me.