(a)wake?

Blinking blearily, I return from my unintentional blog hiatus (hereinafter UBH) to survey the IP scene and reclaim my rhetorical mojo. The UBH was attributable to many causes, chief among them a wave of personal and familial health concerns that now appear to be in the rear-view mirror. I hope. Please?

While this blog was somnabulant, the Supremes agreed to tackle P2P head-on, in a case that will determine, for the near future, whether the Betamax precedent can be extended to software, in particular the applications at the heart of P2P services like Morpheus and Grokster.

I'd like to thank Mitch Bainwol for the latest unintentionally hilarious quote from the ongoing copyright rumble:

"There are seminal issues before the court--the future of the creative industries and legitimate Internet commerce," Mitch Bainwol, chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a statement. "These are questions not about a particular technology, but the abuse of that technology by practitioners of a parasitical business model."

I saw the phrase "parasitical business model" and automatically thought "RIAA" owing to my knowledge of the experiences of artists like John Fogerty with their big-label copyright holders. It took me a moment-and-a-half to realize that Bainwol was calling out the P2P companies, and not indicting his own constituents.

In absolute fairness, not all big record companies have acted as disgracefully as Saul Zaentz and Fantasy, so that "parasite" label is in many cases not accurate. And many of the smaller independent labels have pursued true partnerships with the artists on their rosters.

That said, an organization like the RIAA that is so enormously dependent on the creative efforts of others would do well to avoid the charge of parasitism until it has demonstrably assured fair compensation to the performers it depends upon. In short, show us a little more symbiosis, and then you can start throwing the "p-word" around.