Are you wondering why so much litigation is taking place this year? Microsoft is suing Red Hat and Novell. Novell has been suing Microsoft. The RIAA has sued Jammie Thomas. Now the RIAA is testing the waters to see if suing the large binary repositories for Usenet newsgroups is feasible.

The simple answer is that innovation is no longer taking place. Someone in each of these companies decided that recouping perceived losses through litigation was going to be more cost effective than coming up with new ideas.

First, this sort of intellectual bankruptcy isn’t good for the nation. It is precisely the same sort of situation that has worked against this nation when some group of talking heads, in a think tank, decided that the United States could survive as a place where ideas could supplant production. Ideas are crucial, but the idea needs raw materials to act upon.

Being a thought economy requires lots of thought, and it seems that many Americans aren’t up to the task.

Rather than design new things, improve old things, or critique things manufactured, it has become easier for some of the lazy minds in charge to pursue that which has been rolling into the cracks. This will bring dollars into the coffers of the winning litigants, but does little for anyone else. In the interim, innovators from other shores are thinking of new things, and putting those ideas into hard products, that have value no matter who holds them.

The RIAA attack on newsgroups may be a fight that is just, but it detracts from better uses of manpower and resources. Files on Usenet are like insects, they move about without much trouble, and tracking any one is almost impossible. Rather than pursue the trail of possible targets, the RIAA, MPAA, and others should simply encourage improved quality of product, and use reason to ascertain that what is being currently tracked should fall under the title of acceptable loss, that which is too small, and not financially efficient to worry about.

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Quote of the Day:
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
–George Santayana

Tags: riaa, mpaa, microsoft, novell, red hat, litigation, innovation, hard goods