RIAA’s Day in Court Nearly Over
The music industry’s lawsuit crusade against defenseless college students and housewives appears to have hit the skids lately. That might mean it’s almost time for socially responsible investors to start looking at music publishers again, after their long industrywide hiatus from research lists.
[omitted some text…]
Flat-fee subscription services like the revamped Napster (Nasdaq: NAPS) and RealNetworks’ (Nasdaq: RNWK) Rhapsody, as well as pay-per-download distributors like Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), can’t wait to see the old-fashioned music distribution networks go down in flames. Consumers in general are honest, law-abiding people, and as long as you give them a chance to get what they want by legal means, and at a reasonable price, piracy will be a niche phenomenon. Today, the opposite is true, thanks to draconian licensing policies and a wrong-headed take on the law. But that’s all about to change.
”