Digital Music Fans Get A Break In Europe

from the really? dept

Amazingly enough, it appears that the European Commission is recommending that the music industry shut up and sit tight when it comes to trying to turn all of their customers into criminals. Basically, the draft document says that copyright infringement is only illegal when done for commercial purposes. As you might imagine, the music industry is furious about this. Of course, as part of this, they consider file sharing services, like Kazaa, illegal because they run ads (thus, commercially benefiting from the file sharing). I think this move is a step in the right direction - but it's still missing the point. In trying to create this "balance" between the industry and consumers everyone keeps missing out on the fact that this isn't a zero-sum game. There are solutions where everyone does well. If the industry embraced file sharing, and realized that it could be a viable (and cheap) promotional tool, they wouldn't be in such a mess these days.