There’s a piece in The Washington Post today about the RIAA’s latest ridiculous stance on downloading; now they say it’s illegal to keep a copy of a CD you own on your computer or mp3 player, or as Sony BMG’s chief of litigation put it, copying a song you bought is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy,’ ” That means in the eyes of the record business, transferring a CD you bought to iTunes, or onto an mp3 player, or onto cassette tape, is against the law.

The RIAA now seems to be enforcing this extreme position, going after a guy in Arizona just for keeping back-up copies of 2,000 songs he owned on CD on his computer. (Edit - Engadget says WaPo is exaggerating) The industry maintains that it “will continue to bring lawsuits” against those who “ignore years of warnings.”

In that case maybe the record business should file a lawsuit against itself, because it’s been ignoring serious warnings for years. Piracy is a market signal. As the article says, “69 percent of teenagers surveyed said they thought it was legal to copy a CD they own and give it to a friend… more than half of current college students download music and movies illegally.” If that’s not a warning that the business has changed, I don’t know what is.

The Post has some good advice on how the record business should respond to Pirate’s Dilemma it faces: “As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don’t usually kill off old media: That’s the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.”