So the heavy hammer of justice has finally stamped an end to Joel Tenenbaum’s admirable fight against the Recording Industry Association of America and for his defiance this lone renegade now faces an eye-watering bill of almost $1m. Joel Tenenbaum went to court for the rest of us, went to court to try and change the law. Taking the stand for a crime we’ve all committed, this martyr of the Cyborg Generation it now preparing to declare bankruptcy. Although it’s worth mentioning perhaps the $675,000 is significantly less than the $4.5m originally demanded by the cohorts who control 85% of the States’ commercial music.

Joel Tenenbaum was one of the 40,000 people selected at random from a pool of file sharers online to be sued by the RIAA and their formidable team of lawyers. 39,998 settled out of court for sums around £3,000, only two fought their case. The first, Jamie Thomas-Rasset lost her battle to the tune of $1.92m and now Tenenbaum is the second casualty to the cause. Thomas-Rasset was found guilty of sharing 24 songs, Tenenbaum distributed 30. So how excessive were their punishments?

The RIAA has admitted that the purpose behind the lawsuits was not to reclaim expenses for damages to their commercial interests, but rather to set an example to other file sharers across the world. However, with neither defendants having a hope in hell of being able to pay their eventual fine, how is this an example? What the RIAA seem to be threatening file sharers with is their ability to bankrupt you, and to me this seems like the tactic of an unimaginative bully.

The real question here though is whether or not the law itself is correct. I’m certainly not one to encourage piracy, and having worked for and with a number of record labels I understand the damage that file sharing does to the business model.

However, the role of the law in the traditional sense is to enforce public morality. It should not be arbitrary rules set to maintain the interests of a few, but rather to keep people abiding by the general laws of popular opinion. For instance, some people think drugs are brilliant, but the majority think they should be outlawed.

But are we not reaching a point with file sharing that the guilt and ethical questions are fading fast, if not gone already. If a crime is committed by hundreds of millions of people around the world, is it really a crime or a shift in moral opinion? Music has lost most of its tangible value to people but thats surely a result of the technological revolution and not the corruption of our moral fibers.

The real solution to the demise of the music industry lies in changing the business model to accommodate this new mindset and the law should reflect the want of the people. Rather than pettily throwing around ridiculous law suits, the RIAA should have pumped the money it wasted suing Tenenbaum into technologies such as Spotify that actual serve to help the flailing music industry. A new argument it is not, but it is certainly one that the RIAA should be heeding more seriously.

And as testimony to the public opinion on the criminal behaviour of Joel Tenenbaum a campaign has been created to raise money for his cause. You can donate by going to the website
Joel Fights Back.