Musicians, indeed everyone with unique intellectual properties, deserve payment for use of their work. But beyond that basic principle, the music industry just doesn't seem to get it when dealing with its largely youthful audience. .
The youngest among them were practically born online. And online is where you reach them -- not where you hunt them down with lawsuits and half-baked "amnesty" offers, as the Recording Industry Association of America started doing last week. The 261 lawsuits against music-swappers may be just the first among thousands; an estimated 60 million people have done some file sharing, half of them teens. .
Young people spend big bucks on concerts, T-shirts and other badges of their cultural tastes, so money is less the issue than easy access and the ability to program the equivalent of a personal jukebox. The Apple iTunes Music Store, which charges 99 cents per download, has shown it can be done. But an industry that made the transition from vinyl to tape to CD seems flummoxed by cyberspace -- potentially the most lucrative medium yet, because it requires no manufactured material. .
People who want to do the right thing -- make sure artists are paid -- certainly hope for a cyber-solution. Somewhere between spending $13-plus per CD, when you want only one song, and worrying that the industry will sue you for sampling and swapping, the answer should be found online -- not in court. .
