• Wired, Friday, September 5, 2008 11 AM

Wired marks the five-year anniversary of the Recording Industry Association of America's assault on illegal file-sharers with an article about how ineffective the more than 30,000 lawsuits launched by the organization have been in curbing the widespread problem. According to the report, the suits have targeted everyone from students to the elderly -- no one in the U.S. who uses KaZaa, Limewire or any other file-sharing network is immune to the RIAA's investigators, and fines under the Copyright Act go as high as $150,000 per track.

Meanwhile, billions of copyrighted songs continue to change hands on file-sharing services and some serious questions about the legality of file-sharing have gone unanswered. As one New York area lawyer says, "We're just barely scratching the surface of the legal issues. (The RIAA is) extorting people -- and for what purpose?"

On Sept. 8, 2003, the RIAA reformed its strategy of only going after file-sharing services like Napster, to targeting file-sharers themselves in 261 independent lawsuits across the country. Five years later, the RIAA admits that its efforts have amounted to little more than "public relations effort aimed at striking fear into the hearts of would-be downloaders." As Eric Garland of digital music research firm BigChampagne says, the lawsuits simply are not reducing the number of people trading music online. "If the goal is to reduce file sharing, it's a failure," he says.

Read the whole story at Wired »