RIAA too quick to get into court. (mw comment).

The RIAA has an unusually high public profile for a music industry association. Search the internet for references to the US's premier music industry organisation and you come up with all sorts of "anti-fan" sites--"boycott-riaa", "Consumers Against the RIAA", "riaasucks" and many others.

And last week's announcement that it is planning to take legal action against the consumers who upload music onto file-sharing services such as KaZaA, Grokster and others will not improve its reputation. Not that the RIAA will care too much about that.

The issue of what to do in the face of the dangers posed by file-sharing operations--which have been built into profitable businesses by supplying music fans with the means to share music, free and illegitimately--is not an easy one to tackle. But threatening to take consumers, potentially thousands of them according to the RIAA, into the courts sounds like a PR nightmare.

The RIAA move is clearly designed to send out an educational message about the illegality of "uploading". What is worrying, however, is that the message which will be received more readily will be a very different one.

Yes, it is the uploaders who will be targeted--the people who make tens of thousands of files available for others to download--rather than the less passive downloaders. But, however it is presented, the headlines will be inevitable--"record companies sue music fans".