The music industry takes a hit.

I recently read a post at Law of the Game, a blog that deals with legal issues surrounding video games, regarding a new act called the PRO-IP act recently put forth in the United States. Some of the things the act does is give the government more powers to go after average-joe downloaders, and also introduces stiffer penalties for pirating works by giving individual songs the label of indivudual works, for example. This means someone caught downloading an album could be fined for each track in an album they have downloaded.

The article goes on to explain the reason that this legislation hurts the music industry, here's a small preview:

"Ultimately, the way this hurts the music industry isn't in practical enforcement. They backed this bill because it helps their enforcement. It's an issue of image, and as the bad publicity keeps falling on the RIAA, more and more consumers are taking their entertainment dollars elsewhere. It's insulting to the consumer that the RIAA would even suggest that ripping a CD you purchased so you can put it on your iPod is illegal, even though they haven't tried to enforce that idea at this time."

Read the whole article at Law of the Game.