Big Music Label Foe LimeWire’s Newest Executive: A Big Music Label Veteran
by Peter Kafka
Posted on June 29, 2009 at 11:40 AM PT
What do you do when your job working for a big music label disappears? You go to work for a pirate-friendly file-sharing service that’s being sued by the big music labels.
That’s the path that Jason Herskowitz has chosen. Old job: VP of product management at Total Music, Universal Music and Sony’s (SNE) attempt to create a service that offered either free downloads or free streaming music as a way to combat file-sharing. It collapsed earlier this year and Project Playlist bought some of its parts.
New job: VP of product management at LimeWire, one of the last (one of the only?) high-profile peer-to-peer file-sharing companies based in the U.S. Not surprisingly, the service was embroiled with industry lawsuits for three years running.
Here’s Herskowitz’s blog post announcing his new job and his pending move to Brooklyn (Welcome, Jason! Pretty sure we’re neighbors.) from Washington D.C. It’s not a crazy career move: A job is a job and there aren’t that many in digital music these days. Besides, I hear that LimeWire has nice offices.
Which reminds me: How is it, exactly, that LimeWire stays afloat when the labels have been able to force so many of its peers to shut down? Good question. I’ve asked around and heard murmurings that the labels and the file-sharing service may be able to work out some kind of agreement, but I’ve heard that every 12 months or so. So I’ll believe it in when I see it.
In the meantime, LimeWire continues to allow you to download just about any song (and many other things) you can imagine over the Web for free, without paying anyone a cent. Though if you do try to download a copyrighted song, you do get this stern warning from the service. I take it in the same spirit as the warnings head shops give you when they say the bong they’re selling is for tobacco use only (click to enlarge):
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Comments
It’s too bad that the concept of peer to peer file sharing has become muddled by copyright issues.
Had the RIAA, Newspapers and big media companies figured out what the results of the Internet in general would be, clearly they would have done everything in their power to squash it.
Everyone seems to support the technology (printing press, broadcasting) that got them into the position of information gatekeeper, but then turn against any subsequent innovation.
The hypocrisy is blatant, and ought to be an embarrassment to anyone who participates. But those involved are notoriously incapable of embarrassment.
Posted by Mac Beach at June 29th, 2009 at 4:03 pm