The RIAA and those who use them as a cover continue to show their cluelessness about their public image.  Boing Boing, among others, has given some much needed attention to the RIAA’s latest bizarre maneuver:

"Last week, we posted about the family of a recently deceased defendant in a lawsuit by the RIAA being given 60 days to grieve before the RIAA went on to depose the dead man’s children in a renewed suit against his estate. In the intervening days, the publicity about this despicable act — suing the family of a dead man — has mounted. Today, an RIAA spokesperson, Jonathan Lamy, contacted me today with this statement:

    Our hearts go out to the Scantleberry family for their loss. We had decided to temporarily suspend the productive settlement discussions we were having with the family. Mr. Scantleberry had admitted that the infringer was his stepson, and we were in the process settling with him shortly before his passing. Out of an abundance of sensitivity, we have elected to drop this particular case.

I wrote back to ask him this followup question:

    Where was the "abundance of sensitivity" when the RIAA failed to initially drop its case against the Scantleberry family following the death of the named defendant in the case? Given that this "abundance" only materialized within 24 hours of this story hitting several large news outlets and blogs isn’t it fair to say that the RIAA is demonstrating sensitivity to its public image, and not its sensitivity to the Scantleberry family?

To which he declined to further comment."

As someone who feels that intellectual property is worth defending, I’m really sad to see the whole concept of copyright protection being undermined in such a ridiculous manner.

On the one hand, I do know kids who would be otherwise filetrading if it wasn’t for the lawsuits.  On the other hand, it’s one of those things they do because of the legal threat and doesn’t seem to have affected their awareness of any of the deeper issues related to intellectual property.

What that means is that if filetrading systems emerge that can effectively protect the identity of those using them or if Internet personal security tools become more readily available, filetrading will just grow again among those who’ve been scared off.  Not to mention the fact that super cheap MP3 companies in Russia seem to be doing a nice job of leveraging the situation by offering all sorts of unlicensed downloads.

To follow the disgraceful antics of the RIAA check for the blog Recording Industry vs The People that also has a Directory of Lawyers Defending Against RIAA Lawsuits.

I was reminded to write about this situation by an entry at Listening Post.