Muxtape down - RIAA rears its many ugly heads
The music sharing site Muxtape is down today, with this cryptic assurance:
“Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”
I posted about them a short while back, and I was sure then that they’d run into legal problems because of what they were doing. After all, there have been other music sharing sites that were more bound by copywrite law - requiring the shares to come directly from purchased CDs, for example - and they didn’t fare any better with the nefarious RIAA.
However you feel about music and the sharing of it, I don’t think we’re likely to get away from the problems we faced in the Napster era from 8 years ago. It may just get more hairy, as social media makes it easier to share music.
Personally, I have to wonder that the RIAA hasn’t sued the makers of boom boxes and stereo speakers - surely these devices are the most abused forms of sharing music with people who haven’t purchased it, no?
