The New York Times is reporting that the RIAA is starting another round of lawsuits this week. RIAA's president, Cary Sherman, told the Times that "People who engage in illegal file-sharing should be aware, whether or not they hear about it this month, that doesn't mean the enforcement program has been reduced in any way. If anything it will be increased.''

Here's my view about this. The RIAA is trying to be careful to sue only downloaders of significant numbers of songs. What these downloaders are doing is clearly illegal. And to the extent these suits alert more people to the existence of copyright law, that's a fine thing. These suits are well-founded and legitimate. The DMCA allows the subpoena process that the RIAA is using, and I don't see that process as a tremendous problem (I'm aware this is a heretical view). The RIAA is now warning people of its proposed actions, which helps.

On the other hand: there is still an enormous amount of resentment out there among the younger set about the expense of music. Its price doesn't seem to match what it's worth to millions of consumers, and the fact that expensive CDs will be copy-protected only adds to the upset. There's no particular reason not to have price competition as between major labels, and Universal's suggestion of a couple of months ago that it would lower its prices was very welcome. (Universal quickly ran into an MSRP issue with retailers, but we trust that will be straightened out eventually.)

The continued misfit between what the public wants and what the labels want seems significant to me. (Enormous exception: cheap sources of downloadable music that can be easily burned onto portable media.) Let's choose a product other than music -- say, bicycles. If all bicycle manufacturers said all bicycle purchasers have to buy a particular form of bicycle, and that no bicycle can be loaned to a friend, we'd be upset -- and some black-market bicycle makers would show up with cheaper goods that consumers liked. What's so special about songs? Why do they get such special treatment? It must be true that all law is becoming intellectual property law -- it's like the growth of Chinatown. It's taking over. Little Italy, seen as a land of competition, choices, and value (take this leap of faith with me) is shrinking. We're left with shards of rights, compliant devices, and expensive tunes.

So: I'm all for the lawsuits, that's fine, but you can't build a marketplace through litigation. Just as you can't demand that you come from a happy family, and make that true by fiat, you can't create loyalty to a product or a service by suing some of your customers.