More reasons why the music industry sucks...ala an email I received.

Just Spoofing

The music industry has added another weapon to its usual sue-everyone response to music file swapping. It is now paying firms to swamp peer-to-peer services with bogus music files.

The idea behind such "spoofing" is that by raising the cost, in time and effort, of shared files, consumers will be driven to purchase the record labels' own offerings. The labels are in effect turning the Net's anything goes ethos against file swappers.

This shows just how determined the big labels are to keep their historical price-points and business models in the face of an overwhelming change in technology. They would rather spend money to push up the cost of a competing good instead of adjusting their own prices downward.

Another track being contemplated by the Recording Industry Association of America also shows that the labels are willing to go nuclear in their fight to maintain the status quo. The RIAA is kicking around the idea of suing individual users of swapping services.

That the RIAA would even consider taking some teenager with a hard drive full of Blink 182 songs to court shows that they are deadly serious--spoofing or not.