So, did the RIAA score a victory? Or lose another battle in the PR war?

[RawAlex]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

Absolutely, from a legal perspective this is a huge victory for them.

But is it going to do anything to help their record sales?

The problem right now is there there is an entire generation (under 25 or so) that thinks that music is free, period. They don't see that "sharing" music is any different than sending a text message at this point. That is a problem. File sharing has in fact removed the value of music from these people's minds, replaced by a mentality that they can always go online and get more.

It's the same process, for what it is worth, that torrent sites and "illegal" tubes sites do to porn. They remove the value.

When you get a judgement like this, and then turn around and start using it as a hammer, you scare the marginal people out of the game. They people who didn't realize they could get in trouble, the people who didn't think they could ever get caught etc. P2P is entirely dependant on having tons of people online to share. Drop below a certain level, and it gets very hard to find files. Removing the 50-80% of people file sharing only because they think they won't get caught would grandly change the game.

At some points, ISPs are going to start to feel the pinch of liablity as well, and aren't going to want to have to answer court order after court order for customer information, and will start to disconnect trouble clients.

Then things change.