• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 9, 2006

This morning the Recording Industry Association of America boasted that federal authorities had secured indictments against two men for what it termed "pre-release piracy."

The defendants, Robert Thomas of Milwaukee and Jared Bowser of Jacksonville, Fla., allegedly posted songs online from "Jackson City Nights," a Ryan Adams & The Cardinals album, before the official release date.

The tracks were posted to a fan site last August, but the album wasn't released by Lost Highway, a Universal Music Group division, until the end of September.

"Pre-release piracy can interfere with the vision that the artist had for the music, as well as marketing strategies of the album and the significant commercial investment of everyone involved in creating, producing and distributing it," said the RIAA in a statement.

While music labels have a reason to protect their ability to sell music, this case appears to be the first one in which the RIAA is focusing specifically on the harm to a marketing strategy that comes from tracks leaked before a release date.

Frankly, it's hard to imagine that there's any evidence backing up the claim that making songs available in advance, or in a different order than what the label envisioned, hurts sales--or, rather, hurts sales more than post-release piracy.

But music labels apparently believe this is the case. Coincidentally, today's New York Times also ran an article about the record label Island Def Jam making tracks available on the radio but withholding them from iTunes, in hopes of building fan interest.

In an on-demand world, where consumers are used to going online to find content on their schedules, where even TV stations like NBC are willing to make shows available online before their air date, record companies' reliance on the notion of a "release date" seems surprisingly antiquated.